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ISBN 978-1-912891-76-4
ISBN 978-1-912891-76-4
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
本书内容
Inside This Book
Introduction: What Is Philosophy?
Learn to Say What’s on Your Mind
with Ludwig Wittgenstein
It’s Hard to Know What We Really Want
with Simone de Beauvoir
When Someone Is Angry, Maybe It’s Not You Who Is Responsible
with Ibn Sina
People Are Unhappy, Not Mean
with Zera Yacob
Don’t Expect Too Much
with Seneca
Maybe You Are Just Tired
with Matsuo Basho
What Is Normal Isn’t Normal
with Albert Camus
No One Knows…
with René Descartes
Politeness Matters
with Confucius
Why We Procrastinate
with Hypatia of Alexandria
Why It’s Hard to Know What You Want to Do with Your Life
with Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Good Things Are (Unexpectedly) Hard
with Friedrich Nietzsche
Weakness of Strength Theory
with Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Need to Teach Rather than Nag
with Immanuel Kant
The Mind-Body Problem
with Jean-Paul Sartre
Why You Feel Lonely
with Michel de Montaigne
The Meaning of Life
with Aristotle
Why We Hate Cheap Things
with Mary Wollstonecraft
The News Doesn’t Always Tell The Whole Story
with Jacques Derrida
艺术就是宣传我们真正需要的东西，
作者：格奥尔格·威廉·弗里德里希·黑格尔
Art Is Advertising for What We Really Need
with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Why Do Some People Get Paid More than Others?
with Adam Smith
Shyness: How to Overcome It
with Maimonides
介绍
INTRODUCTION
什么是哲学？
What is Philosophy?
哲学是一门相当神秘的学科，大多数人对此一无所知。一般学校不教哲学，一般成年人不理解哲学，整个学科看起来很奇怪，有点不必要。这真的很遗憾，因为事实上，无论年龄大小，哲学都可以教给每个人很多东西。它甚至可能是你学习过的最重要的学科。这本书想为你打开这扇门——向你展示哲学到底是什么，以及它如何帮助你理解生活。
Philosophy is quite a mysterious subject that most people don’t know anything about. The average school doesn’t teach it, the average adult does not understand it, and the whole subject can seem odd and kind of unnecessary. That’s a real pity, because, in fact, philosophy has a lot to teach everyone, whatever their age. It might even be the most important subject you will ever study. This book wants to open the door for you—to show you what philosophy is all about, and how it can help you to understand life.
“哲学”这个词本身就给了我们一些线索，让我们知道为什么这个主题如此重要。它最初是一个古希腊词：第一部分philo，意思是“爱”（philately意思是对邮票的热爱）。第二部分来自sophia这个词，意思是“智慧”。所以，当你把这两个部分放在一起时—— philo - sophy ——它的字面意思是“对智慧的热爱”。
The word ‘philosophy’ itself gives us a bit of a clue as to why the subject matters. It’s originally a word from Ancient Greek: the first part, philo, means ‘love’ (philately means the love of stamps). The second part, which comes from the word sophia, means ‘wisdom’. So, when you put the two parts together—philo-sophy—it literally means ‘the love of wisdom’.
哲学帮助我们过上明智的生活。但“智慧”是什么意思呢？一开始并不是很明显。智慧只是聪明吗？不，它远不止于此。智慧意味着明智、善良、冷静和接受生活有时会是怎样的（并不总是完美的，有时真的相当艰难）。
Philosophy helps us to live wise lives. But what does ‘wisdom’ mean? It’s not very obvious, at first. Is being wise just about being clever? No, it’s much more than that. It’s about being sensible, kind, calm and accepting of how life can sometimes be (which isn’t always perfect, and sometimes really quite hard).
为了更好地理解智慧的含义，我们可以想想智慧的反面：不明智。想象一下，你妈妈丢了钥匙。她可能会用不明智的方式处理这件事。也许她开始对别人大喊大叫：“谁动了我的车钥匙？”（尽管可能没有人动过它们）。或者她会惊慌失措，扑倒在沙发上，抱怨自己是个十足的白痴，她的一生都被毁了。可怜的妈妈！
To get a better idea of what wisdom might involve, we can think about its opposite: not being wise. Imagine that your mum loses her keys. There are unwise ways she might deal with this. Maybe she starts shouting at other people: ‘Who moved my car keys?’ (even though probably no one did move them). Or maybe she gets into a panic and throws herself onto the sofa, moaning that she’s a complete idiot and that her entire life is ruined. Poor mum!
更明智的妈妈会怎么做？她不会大发雷霆，也不会立即惊慌失措，而是会想：“嗯，车钥匙确实有时会丢失。我一定把它们放在某个地方了……也许它们在我昨天穿的外套里。”她可以（平静地）问你是否见过它们，她甚至可能会笑着说她忘记把它们放在哪里是多么愚蠢。
What would a wiser mum do? Instead of ranting and raving, or starting to panic straight away, she would think: ‘Well, car keys do tend to get lost from time to time. I must have put them somewhere… maybe they’re in the coat I was wearing yesterday.’ She could ask (calmly) if you had seen them, and she might even laugh about how silly she was to forget where she’d put them.
在很多情况下，你都能看出处理事情的明智与不明智方式之间的区别。每个人的生活中都有很多大大小小的问题——当然也包括你的问题。我们永远无法完全摆脱这些问题（尽管我们努力尝试），但我们都可以更好地处理问题。
There are lots of situations where you can see the difference between unwise and wise ways of dealing with stuff that happens. There are lots of problems, both big and small, in everyone’s life—including yours, too, of course. We can never get rid of them entirely (though we try hard), but we can all get better at how we deal with our problems.
我们可以尝试不要经常生气，尝试少喊叫，尝试不要惊慌失措或伤害我们所爱的人。哲学试图帮助我们在面对生活中我们无能为力的问题时采取更明智的行动。
We can try not to get angry so often, try to shout less, and try not to panic or hurt the people we love. Philosophy tries to help us act more wisely when facing the problems in our lives that we can’t do much about.
明智与不明智的回应
Wise and Unwise Responses
你在四子棋游戏中输给了你的兄弟
You lose a game of connect four to your brother
不明智的回应UNWISE RESPONSES指责你的兄弟作弊（尽管你知道他们没有） Accuse your brother of cheating (though you know they didn’t really) 告诉所有人你有多讨厌你玩的游戏 Tell everyone how much you hate the game you were playing 觉得失败非常重要，而且很长时间都无法释怀 Feel that it’s incredibly important that you lost, and that you won’t get over it for ages |
明智的回应WISE RESPONSES记住这只是一场游戏，你的运气好坏与你的为人无关 Remember it’s only a game, and that whether you have good luck says nothing about what you’re like as a person 提醒自己，你一定会在其他时候获胜，而且你的生活中还有其他更重要的事情 Remind yourself that you’re bound to win some other time and that there are other, more important, things in your life |
朋友对你不太好
A friend isn’t very nice to you
不明智的回应UNWISE RESPONSES对他们残忍一点 Be horrible back to them 觉得自己可能活该受到不公平的对待 Feel that maybe you deserve to be treated badly |
明智的回应WISE RESPONSES想知道什么可能会让他们心烦意乱 Wonder what might be upsetting them 平静地告诉他们，他们伤害了你的感情，并询问他们出了什么问题 Tell them calmly that they hurt your feelings, and ask what’s wrong |
汽车旅程很长
A car journey is very long
不明智的回应UNWISE RESPONSES继续问你什么时候能到 Keep on asking when you’ll get there 告诉所有人你非常非常无聊 Tell everyone that you are very, very bored 每隔几分钟就抱怨路程太长 Complain that the journey is too long every couple of minutes |
明智的回应WISE RESPONSES承认无论你做什么都会花很长时间 Admit to yourself that it’s going to take ages no matter what you do 看看窗外的事物，编一个游戏或故事 Look at things out of the window and make up a game or story 在脑海里设计完美的房子或潜艇来消磨时间 Design the perfect house or submarine in your head to pass the time |
你不喜欢别人给你的晚餐
You don’t like what you’ve been given for dinner
不明智的回应UNWISE RESPONSES大声喊出它有多恶心 Shout about how disgusting it is 扔到地上 Throw it on the floor 拒绝吃它 Refuse to eat it |
明智的回应WISE RESPONSES礼貌地解释你希望得到什么 Politely explain what you would prefer to have instead 下次主动帮忙准备其他东西 Offer to help prepare something else another time 请记住，做晚餐的人并不是故意让你失望，如果你抱怨，可能会伤害他们的感情 Keep in mind that whoever made dinner didn’t mean to disappoint you, and that it might hurt their feelings if you complain |
你不小心毁掉了你正在画的画
You accidentally spoil a drawing you were doing
不明智的回应UNWISE RESPONSES撕碎并盖章 Tear it up and stamp on it 保证不再画画 Promise never to do another drawing again |
明智的回应WISE RESPONSES再试一次——最终你会做得更好 Try again—and eventually you will do it better 把错误变成特色。你可以把污迹变成阴影，或者把墨迹变成蜘蛛——有时，我们认为的“错误”可能是更有趣的事情的开始 Make a feature of the mistake. You could turn a smudge into a shadow or an ink blot into a spider—sometimes, what we think of as an ‘error’ can be the start of something even more interesting |
你必须去睡觉，你不累
You have to go to bed and you’re not tired
不明智的回应UNWISE RESPONSES尖叫着说这一切是多么不公平 Scream about how unfair everything is 关上卧室的门 Slam your bedroom door |
明智的回应WISE RESPONSES记住，生命很长，你最终将能够熬夜 Remember that life is very long—you will be able to stay up late eventually 关注明天将要发生的所有有趣的事情，然后早起，度过一个有趣的早晨 Focus on all the fun things that will happen tomorrow, then get up early and have an interesting morning |
哲学在世界各地已经存在了很长时间，因为人们总是需要一些帮助，让他们少喊叫和少恐慌。他们总是需要一些帮助来理解生活，以及如何最好地处理它。多年来，哲学家们提出了许多有用的想法来提供这种帮助。在这本书的其余部分，我们最喜欢的 26 个明智想法如下。
Philosophy has been going on for a very long time all round the world because people have always needed help with shouting and panicking a bit less. They’ve always needed some help with understanding life and how best to deal with it. Over the years, philosophers have come up with a lot of useful ideas that provide this help. Here, in the rest of this book, are twenty-six of our favourite wise ideas.
大创意 #1
BIG IDEA #1
了解自己
Know Yourself
听起来很奇怪，但也许你不太了解自己。当然，你对自己了解很多——你知道自己的年龄、眼睛的颜色以及午餐喜欢吃什么——但有些事情很难知道。例如，也许你从未见过耳朵的后部，可能也不太了解耳咽管（耳咽管是从耳朵内部通向鼻子后部的管道）。这些事情实际上并不重要，但你可能不知道自己身上还有更重要的事情，你应该知道：关于你的感受。不仅仅是你——每个人都很难理解自己的感受。
It sounds odd to say it, but maybe you don’t know yourself very well. Of course you know lots of things about yourself—you know what age you are, the colour of your eyes and what you like to have for lunch—but some things are hard to know. Maybe you’ve never seen the back of your ears, for instance, and probably you don’t know much about your Eustachian tubes either (those are the tubes that go from inside your ears to the back of your nose). These sort of things don’t actually matter much, but there are more important things you might not know about yourself, which you should: things about your feelings. It’s not just you—everyone has difficulty understanding their feelings.
这是因为你的大脑（以及其他人）的工作方式有一点很奇怪：你的大脑非常善于注意到你的感受。你完全知道自己感到不安、担心或兴奋。但你的大脑并不擅长了解你为什么会有这种感觉。它不会自动记住是什么让你不安或担心，或者你真正兴奋的是什么。
This is because of a funny thing about the way your brain (and everyone else’s) works: your brain is very good at noticing that you have a feeling. You know perfectly well that you feel upset or worried or excited. But your brain is not so good at seeing why you feel that feeling. It doesn’t automatically remember what is upsetting or worrying you, or what you are really excited about.
假设你原本计划放学后和妈妈一起烤饼干。你整天都在期待着这件事，但她打电话告诉你工作上有些事，她没时间和你一起做饼干了。你很失望——你不知道现在该做什么，而且一切似乎都有点无聊。后来，当你妈妈回家时，你觉得不知为何她今天很烦人。她让你收拾桌子准备晚餐，但你没有继续做，而是大喊“不！”，她回答说：“别这样跟我说话！”突然间，你不知不觉地就冲出了厨房，大喊“我恨你，你太专横了！”
Suppose you had planned to bake biscuits with your mum after school. You’d been looking forward to it all day, but then she rings and tells you that something’s come up at work, and she won’t have time to make the biscuits with you after all. You’re disappointed—you don’t know what to do now, and everything seems a bit boring. Later, when your mum comes home, you have a feeling that for some reason she is very annoying today. She asks you to clear the table for dinner and instead of getting on with it you shout, ‘No!’, to which she responds, ‘Don’t speak to me like that!’ Suddenly before you know it, you’ve stormed out of the kitchen, shouting ‘I hate you, you’re so bossy!’
你有一种强烈的感觉：“我很难过！”但你的大脑搞不清楚是什么引发了这种感觉。它忘记了你为什么真的难过。这并不是说你恨你的妈妈，你只是因为真的想和她一起度过一段愉快的时光而感到伤心，但感觉非常失望。你并不真的认为她很专横，你很伤心，因为你爱的人太忙了，没能早点关注你。感觉“我妈妈太专横了”和感觉“我希望我妈妈有更多时间和我一起烤饼干”之间有很大的区别。但你的大脑不太擅长区分两者。
You have a big, powerful feeling: ‘I am very upset!’ but your brain gets confused about what started the feeling. It forgets why you are really upset. It’s not that you hate your mum, you are just hurt because you really wanted to have a nice time with her and are feeling very disappointed. You don’t really think that she is bossy, you are upset that someone you love was too busy to pay you attention earlier. There’s a big difference between feeling ‘my mum is so bossy’, and feeling ‘I wish my mum had more time to bake biscuits with me’. But your brain is not very good at seeing the difference.
想象一下，有一次你想和姐姐一起踢足球。你问她想不想一起踢，但她说她很累，现在不想踢。你回到房间，想看书，但看书并不怎么有趣。你在屋子里四处游荡，想找点事情做。然后，也许你看到弟弟在地上堆砖头，你突然生气了。你把砖头踢翻，他开始哭了起来。你的大脑知道你很生气，但它不太擅长记住是什么让你有这种感觉。你的大脑没有记住是你的姐姐让你不高兴，而是认为是你的你生气的对象是哥哥和他扔的砖头。这些时候你对自己还不是很了解。不了解自己会带来问题。你越是跟妈妈说她专横，她就越不可能和你一起做饼干（这才是你真正想要的）；对弟弟生气并不能让你更接近和姐姐一起踢足球。
Imagine this time that you wanted to play football with your older sister. You ask her if she wants to play, but she says she is tired and can’t be bothered right now. You go to your room and try to read a book, but it’s not very interesting. You wander about the house looking for something to do. Then maybe you see your little brother making a pile of bricks on the floor and you suddenly become angry. You kick the bricks over and he starts to cry. Your brain knows that you’re annoyed, but it is not very good at keeping track of what has made you feel that way. Instead of remembering that your sister upset you, your brain thinks it is your brother and his bricks that you are cross with instead. These are times when you don’t know yourself very well. Not knowing yourself causes problems. The more you tell your mum she’s bossy, the less likely she is to make biscuits with you (which is what you really want); getting mad with your little brother doesn’t get you any closer to playing football with your sister.
但故事并不一定就到此结束。你可以更好地了解自己。最好的方法是问问自己你的感受。你可以问自己：之前发生了什么让我烦恼的事情？我的烦恼来自哪里——也许不是在过去的三秒钟，而是今天早些时候，甚至是昨天？
But this does not have to be the end of the story. You can get better at knowing yourself. The best way to do this is by asking yourself questions about what you feel. You can ask: what happened earlier that bothered me? Where has my upset come from—maybe not in the last three seconds, but earlier today, or even yesterday?
想象一下，一种感觉有点像一条长长的蛇，从树枝上垂下来。从你站着的地方，你可以看到蛇的头和分叉的舌头：这就是心烦意乱的感觉。但你看不到尾巴，而尾巴才是你感到心烦意乱的真正原因。尾巴卷在哪个树枝上？是霸道的树枝还是饼干的树枝？是小弟弟的树枝还是足球的树枝？你必须找出答案。你试图将蛇愤怒的头和尾巴连接起来。所以，当你心烦意乱时，你可以问：这种感觉的尾巴在哪里？它挂在哪个树枝上？
Imagine that a feeling is a bit like a long, long snake hanging down from a branch of a tree. From where you’re standing you can see the snake’s head and its forked tongue: that’s the feeling of being upset. But you can’t see the tail, and the tail is the real reason you feel upset. What branch is the tail curled round? Is it the bossy branch or the biscuit branch; is it the little brother branch or the football branch? You have to find out. You’re trying to join up the angry head of the snake with the tail. So, when you are upset you can ask: where is the tail of this feeling? What branch is it hanging from?
哲学的一个重要部分就是问自己为什么会有这样的感觉：我为什么会难过？到底是什么在困扰着我？谁让我难过？这不仅仅是孩子们能做到的事情——很多成年人也应该花更多的时间去做。因为你越了解自己的感受，你就越容易解释你正在经历的事情。
A big part of philosophy is asking yourself why you feel what you do: why am I upset? What’s really been bothering me? Who has upset me? This isn’t just something children can do—it’s something a lot of adults should spend a bit more time on as well. Because the better you know your feelings, the more easily you can explain what you’re going through.
苏格拉底的思想
An Idea From Socrates
我们刚刚看到的那个重要的观点（我们不太了解自己）来自一个叫苏格拉底的人。苏格拉底生活在两千多年前的希腊雅典城。他穿着长袍（和当时的其他人一样），留着长胡子——可能因为他太忙于思考而经常忘记洗澡，所以胡子很臭。
The big, important idea that we have just looked at (that we don’t know ourselves very well) comes from a man called Socrates. Socrates lived in the city of Athens in Greece more than two thousand years ago. He wore long robes (like everyone else in those days) and had a long beard—which was probably rather smelly because he was so busy thinking that he often forgot to have a bath.
他喜欢在城里散步，和朋友们见面，问他们为什么兴奋、担心或困惑。他的想法是，人们往往不知道自己为什么会有这样的想法和感受。苏格拉底发明了哲学，帮助我们更好地理解自己。苏格拉底非常热衷于“为什么”这个词。他总是问人们棘手的“为什么”问题：你为什么和这个人是朋友？你为什么不喜欢某某？他不是故意要刻薄或尴尬；他真的想进行一场有趣的讨论。他想成为人们的“思考之友”。
He liked to walk about the city, meet his friends and ask them questions about what they were excited or worried or puzzled about. His idea was that often people do not know why they have the thoughts and feelings they do. Socrates invented philosophy to help us understand ourselves better. Socrates was very keen on the word ‘why’. He was always asking people tricky ‘why’ questions: why are you friends with this person? Why don’t you like so-and-so? He was not being mean or awkward; he really wanted to have an interesting discussion. He wanted to become people’s ‘thinking-friend’.
你也可以像苏格拉底一样，成为自己思考的朋友。你所要做的就是问问自己你的感受——为什么我对妈妈感到不满？或者，为什么我想踢我弟弟的砖头？当你这样做时，你正在做一些非常特别的事情。你正在加入自苏格拉底坐下来与雅典的朋友开始聊天以来一直在进行的哲学大讨论。
You can be like Socrates, too, by being your own thinking-friend. All you have to do is ask yourself questions about what you’re feeling—why am I upset with mum? Or, why do I feel like kicking over my little brother’s bricks? When you do this you are doing something very special. You are joining in the big conversation of philosophy that’s been going on ever since Socrates sat down and started chatting with his friends in Athens.
好主意 #2
BIG IDEA #2
学会说出你的想法
Learn to Say What’s on Your Mind
感谢古希腊的思想之友苏格拉底，我们学会了如何更好地了解自己。然而，情况往往有所不同：你可能非常了解自己，但你真正希望的是其他人更了解你。
Thanks to Socrates, our thinking-friend from Ancient Greece, we’ve learnt about how you can get to know yourself better. However, quite often the situation is a bit different: you might know yourself quite well, but what you really wish is that other people understood you better.
做你自己，有一件奇怪而重要的事情，那就是只有你自己知道你在想什么、感受什么。其他人无法自动理解你脑子里在想什么——他们永远也理解不了，除非你努力解释，通常要用很多词。他们猜不出你在想什么、感受什么，尽管有时我们都希望他们能猜到，甚至想象他们能猜到。
The strange and important thing about being you, is that only you know what you are thinking and feeling. Other people cannot automatically understand what’s going on inside your head—and they never will, unless you try hard to explain it, normally using quite a few words. They can’t guess what you’re thinking or how you feel, even though sometimes we all wish that they could, and even imagine that they do.
你的思想就像一个盒子，里面装着你所有的想法和感受。你可以立即看到盒子里的东西并感受到它，但其他人却无法如此直接地接触到它。你的想法和感受对其他人来说是看不见的，而对你来说却一清二楚。这意味着存在一个很大的危险：其他人可能不理解你，但你会认为他们理解你——或者至少他们应该理解你。
Your mind is like a box, with all your thoughts and feelings inside it. You can see what’s in the box and feel it straight away, but no one else has such immediate access. Your thoughts and feelings are as invisible to other people as they are clear to you. That means there’s a big danger: other people may not understand you, but you will be thinking that they do—or at least that they should.
别人不理解你的想法，并不意味着他们很卑鄙或愚蠢（尽管有时感觉是这样）。只是他们需要被告知——而你需要告诉他们。这样做可能非常困难和累人，但必须这样做。
It’s not that other people are mean or stupid when they don’t understand what’s going on inside your head (even though that’s how it sometimes feels). It’s just they need to be told—and you need to tell them. It can be really difficult and tiring to do that, but it needs to be done.
当你还是个婴儿时，大人很容易猜出你的“脑袋”里在想什么。你只需要别人帮你做一些简单的事情。也许你饿了、困了或者想玩游戏。那时候，你不需要解释。善良的人会帮你猜，而且大多数时候他们猜对了。
When you were a baby, grown-ups could easily guess what was in your ‘mind-box’. There were only ever a few simple things you might need from other people. Maybe you were hungry or sleepy or wanted to play a game. At that time, you did not need to explain. Kind people guessed for you, and most of the time they got it right.
婴儿时期，让别人猜出你当时的想法或感受是件好事。但随着年龄的增长，这会产生一个问题：如果你习惯了善良的人能够猜出你脑子里在想什么，那么你就会自然而然地认为情况会一直如此——如果人们善良、仁慈，他们应该能够猜出你脑子里在想什么。然而，随着年龄的增长，你脑子里的想法和感受已经变得更加比以前复杂多了。你不再只是感到疲倦、饥饿或想上厕所。现在你会想到各种各样的事情。这意味着其他人通常无法猜出你真正的想法和感受。
Being a baby and having people guess what you were thinking or feeling was nice. But as you get older, it creates a problem: if you are used to kind people being able to guess what’s in your head, then you automatically think that it will always be this way—if people are nice and kind, they should be able to guess the contents of your mind. However, as you get older, the thoughts and feelings in your mind have become a lot more complicated than they used to be. You don’t just feel tired, or hungry, or like you need to go to the toilet. Now you have thoughts about all different kinds of things. That means that other people can’t usually guess what you are truly thinking and feeling.
假设你必须去参加一个聚会，但你真的不想去。你知道那里会有一个你不喜欢的男孩。他很不友好，你听到他说了一些关于你朋友的难听的话。你妈妈一直叫你快点，否则你会迟到，但你不想准备，你根本不想去。她问你是否感觉不舒服，你差点说是的，但这不是真正的原因。你妈妈试图保持耐心，但你可以看出她想快点走。接下来，她问你是否对你的鞋子感到不满，或者你是否穿了你不喜欢的东西，你觉得她真是个白痴，把事情搞得这么糟。
Suppose you have to go to a party but you really don’t want to. You know there will be a boy there that you do not like. He’s unfriendly, and you heard him say something horrible about one of your friends. Your mum keeps telling you to hurry up or you’ll be late, but you don’t want to get ready and you don’t want to go at all. She asks if you’re not feeling well and you almost say yes, but that’s not the real reason. Your mum is trying to be patient but you can tell she wants to go soon. Next, she asks you if you are upset about your shoes, or if you are wearing something you don’t like, and you feel like she’s such an idiot for getting it so wrong.
所有这些情况之所以发生，是因为有时我们很容易忘记使用词语，或者害怕或羞于使用词语。你希望大人能猜出你在想什么，就像你还是个婴儿时他们所做的那样。你会生气、恼火和沮丧，因为他们还不知道。如果他们猜错了，你会觉得他们很愚蠢或很可怕。你忘记了，他们不知道并不是他们的错——只是他们看不到你在想什么。
All of this happens because sometimes it’s easy to forget to use words, or to be scared or embarrassed to use them. You want a grown-up to guess what you’re thinking, just like they did when you were a baby. You get angry, annoyed and frustrated that they don’t know already. You feel they are being stupid or horrible if they don’t guess right. You forget that it’s not their fault that they don’t know—it’s just that they can’t see what’s in your mind.
有时你可能不想告诉别人你心里想的是什么，因为这样会让人觉得有点奇怪。也许你不想去游泳，因为你不喜欢别人看到你的身体（尽管你以前很喜欢游泳），或者你不想去看望祖父母，因为你不太喜欢你的奶奶（尽管你认为人们应该喜欢他们的奶奶）。如果你大声对别人说这些话，可能会觉得这些事情听起来很奇怪。但是如果你试着用语言表达这些感受，你的父母可能真的非常理解。他们也曾经年轻过，他们的生活也经历过许多复杂的经历。
Sometimes you might not want to tell someone what is in your mind because it can feel a bit weird. Maybe you do not want to go swimming because you don’t like other people seeing your body (even though you used to love swimming), or you do not want to visit your grandparents because you do not like your granny very much (even though you think people are supposed to like their grannies). It can feel like these sorts of things will sound very odd if you say them out loud to someone else. But if you do try to put these feelings into words, your parents might actually understand quite well. They were young once and they have had lots of complicated experiences in their lives, too.
当你不向别人解释自己的感受时，你会觉得自己无法逃脱。你觉得没有人理解你，你孤身一人。有时你只想坐在房间里哭。但当你试着告诉别人你心里想的是什么时，情况就会好起来。他们可能无法完全按照你的意愿去做，甚至无法完全解决你的问题，但他们会开始理解你在想什么，你就不会感到那么孤独了。知道有人知道你心里在想什么感觉真的很好，有时分享你的问题几乎和得到你想要的东西一样好。
When you don’t explain how you feel to other people, it makes you feel like you can’t escape. You feel like no one understands you, and that you are all alone. Sometimes all you want to do is sit in your room and cry. But when you try to tell people what’s in your mind, it gets better. They mightn’t be able to do exactly what you want, or even solve your problem completely, but they will start to understand what you’re thinking, and you won’t feel so lonely. Knowing someone gets what’s going on inside your head feels really nice, and sometimes sharing your problem can be almost as good as getting what you want.
路德维希·维特根斯坦的观点
An Idea From Ludwig Wittgenstein
如何让别人理解我们心中的想法，这一问题让哲学家路德维希·维特根斯坦非常兴奋。他生活在 20 世纪上半叶，从 1889 年到 1951 年。他是德国人，但一生中大部分时间都在其他地方生活和工作——主要是英国。他最喜欢的食物是面包和奶酪，他喜欢去电影院和放风筝。他非常富有，但他做过很多工作：他打扫医院，在学校教书，做过一段时间的园丁，还在大学教书——他甚至在维也纳为妹妹设计了一栋漂亮的房子。他也一直想造一架飞机，但从未实现过。
The questions of how we can get other people to understand what is on our minds was something that really excited a philosopher called Ludwig Wittgenstein. He lived in the first half of the 20th century, from 1889 to 1951. He was German but for a lot of his life he lived and worked in other places—mainly England. His favourite meal was bread and cheese and he loved going to the cinema and flying kites. He was very rich but he did a lot of jobs: he cleaned hospitals, he taught in a school, he was a gardener for a while and he also taught students at university—he even designed a lovely house for his sister in Vienna. He always wanted to build an aeroplane, too, but he never did.
维特根斯坦喜欢独处，他在挪威乡下有一间小屋，可以独自一人去那里思考。他对我们能用文字做什么很感兴趣。他说，有时我们用文字来描绘，这样别人就能看到我们在想什么。想象一下你说：“我今天看到了一只有趣的狗。”人们无法仅凭这一点知道这只狗是什么样子，所以你可以给出更多的细节：它有长长的松软的耳朵、一条很短的尾巴和三条腿。描述这样的词语有助于其他人在脑海中形成与你脑海中的画面相似的画面。维特根斯坦说，当人们不理解彼此时，是因为他们脑海中的画面不够相似。当有人不理解你脑海中似乎很清楚的事情时，不要感到沮丧，试着更仔细地描述它，看看是否有帮助。
Wittgenstein liked spending time on his own, and he had a little hut in the countryside in Norway where he could go to be by himself and think. He was very interested in what we can do with words. Sometimes, he said, we make pictures with words, so that other people can see what we are thinking about. Imagine you said: ‘I saw an interesting dog today’. People don’t know what the dog was like just from that, so instead you can give more details: it had long floppy ears, a very short tail and only three legs. Describing words like these help other people to make a picture in their head that’s like the picture in your head. Wittgenstein said that when people don’t understand one another it’s because the pictures in their heads aren’t similar enough. When someone doesn’t understand something that seems clear in your head, instead of getting frustrated, try to describe it more carefully and see if it helps.
大创意 #3
BIG IDEA #3
我们很难知道我们真正想要什么
It’s Hard to Know What We Really Want
生活中会发生各种美好的事情。人们总是期待着即将发生的事情，或者制定计划去做让自己开心的事情。然而，即使你希望发生一些你认为会让你开心的事情，但往往一旦它真的发生了，你就会意识到你并没有像你预期的那样开心！这种情况经常发生在成年人身上。
There are all sorts of lovely things that can happen in your life. People are always looking forward to things that are going to happen, or making plans to do things that will make them happy. However, even if you hope something is going to happen that you think will make you happy, often once it does happen, you realise that you don’t feel as happy as you had expected! This happens to grown-ups quite a lot.
也许有那么一刻，你真的很想要一个飞盘。你看到别人在玩飞盘，觉得飞盘很棒。但是，当你得到一个飞盘后，你只玩了几分钟就意识到其实你并不喜欢它，而且它并不那么好玩。或者你真的很想把房间的墙壁漆成你最喜欢的颜色——亮黄色或青绿色。这似乎是个好主意，但当你真正这样做之后，你会发现它看起来很糟糕，你真希望自己当初没有涂过它。
Maybe at one point you really wanted a frisbee. You saw other people playing with one and it looked great. But, when you got one, you only used it for a few minutes before you realised that actually you didn’t really like it and it wasn’t that fun. Or perhaps you really wanted to paint the walls of your room your favourite colour—bright yellow or turquoise. It seemed like a great idea, but after you actually did it, it turned out to look horrible and you wished you had never painted it in the first place.
当这样的事情发生时，有些事情并没有让你感觉就像你想象的那样，这并不意味着没有任何东西能真正让你快乐。它只是表明（像所有人一样）你有时很难提前知道现实中什么才是真正美好的。
When things like this happen, and something does not make you feel the way you thought it would, it does not mean that there isn’t anything that really will make you happy. It just shows that (like everyone) you sometimes find it hard to know in advance what will actually be very nice in reality.
但为什么会发生这种情况？你如何才能让事情变得更好？这里最重要的想法是，你必须开始对你认为你想要的东西提出更多的问题。与其只是等待和希望得到一些东西，你还必须停下来思考这是否真的是你所希望的正确的东西。一如既往，哲学意味着问“为什么？”，并且在你确定答案之前不要放弃——或者尽可能确定答案。
But why does it happen? And how can you get things to turn out better? The big idea here is that you have to start to ask a lot more questions about the things you think you want. Rather than just waiting and hoping to get something, you have to stop and wonder whether it’s truly the right thing to be wishing for. As ever, philosophy means asking ‘why?’ and not giving up until you’re sure of the answer—or as sure as you can be.
有些事情会让你很难发现自己真正想要什么。其中之一就是每个人都在改变。即使只是在过去的一年里，你可能也发生了很大的变化，所以你当时真正想要的东西现在可能对你来说不那么有趣了。但问题是，你的大脑并不总是跟得上。它可能没有注意到你已经长大了，所以它可能会让你觉得你仍然想要一些同样的东西，即使你现在得到了它们，它们会很无聊，或者不会像以前那样让你开心。
There are some things that make it tricky to find out what you really want. One of those things is that everybody changes. Even just during the last year, you’ve probably changed quite a lot, so the things you really wanted then might not be so interesting to you now. But the thing is, your brain doesn’t always keep up. It may not have noticed properly that you’ve been growing, so it might make you think that you still want some of the same things, even though if you got them now, they’d be boring, or wouldn’t make you as happy as they might have done before.
知道自己想要什么很难的另一个原因是，当你听到某件事时，它听起来很棒，但当你真正去做或拥有它时，它实际上并不那么好。睡在冰屋里可能听起来很酷，但实际上它可能只是非常潮湿、寒冷和有点恐怖。
Another reason why knowing what you want can be difficult is that things can sound great when you hear about them, but not actually be that nice when you actually do them or have them. It probably sounds really cool to sleep in an igloo, but in reality it would probably just be very damp and cold and a bit creepy.
然而，我们做出错误选择的最大原因是我们通常很受别人想法的影响。也许你的朋友都说水上乐园很棒，但实际上你并不喜欢它们。这并不意味着你很奇怪，也不意味着你应该强迫自己喜欢他们，假装你想去。事实是，你和你的朋友并不完全一样，他们和你也不完全一样，所以让他们开心的事情对你来说可能并不愉快。
However, the biggest reason we make the wrong choices is that we are usually very influenced by what other people think. Maybe your friends are all saying that water parks are great, but actually you don’t like them. That does not mean you’re strange, or that you should force yourself to like them, and pretend you want to go. The truth is that you are not exactly the same as your friends, and they are not the same as you, so what makes them happy might not be enjoyable for you.
乍一听可能有点奇怪，但决定生日或圣诞节想要什么礼物是一个哲学问题。你应该花点时间考虑。“我到底想要什么？”这个问题是一个重大而重要的问题——而重大的事情需要时间来回答。不仅仅是儿童和青少年难以弄清楚自己真正想要什么。成年人一生也面临这个问题。儿童和成人并不像他们有时看起来那么不同。
It sounds a bit odd at first, but deciding what you want for your birthday or for Christmas is a philosophical question. You should take time over it. The question, ‘What do I really want?’ is a huge, important issue—and big, important things take time to answer. It is not just children and teenagers who find it difficult to work out what they really want. Grown-ups have this problem all their lives too. Children and adults are not as different as they sometimes seem.
广告总是鼓励我们认为自己想要更多的东西，并试图告诉我们，如果我们买了这些东西，我们就会感到快乐。例如，一则广告可能会展示一张某人戴着一块非常昂贵的新手表的照片，看起来非常开心。这让我们的大脑认为：“如果我得到那块手表，我会感觉和广告中的人一样好。”也许它真的是一块很棒的手表，但问题是，感觉快乐实际上与拥有一块很棒的手表无关。它更多地与事物有关比如和朋友相处融洽，享受学习或工作，得到充足的休息和足够的锻炼。手表本身并不能带来很大的不同。我们真的想要一些东西，因为我们想自我感觉良好。但物质不能让我们快乐，只有经历和人际关系才能让我们快乐。我们可能认为一块手表或一双新鞋就是答案，但事实并非如此。汽车、手提包、私人飞机、新手机，甚至去一家高档餐厅，也会发生同样的事情。想想世界上有多少这样的事情，真是奇怪。
Adverts are always encouraging us to think that we want more things, and trying to tell us that we will be happy if we buy them. For example, an advert might show a picture of someone with a very expensive new watch looking really happy. This makes our brain think: ‘If I get that watch I’ll feel as good as the person in the advert.’ Maybe it really is a great watch, but the problem is that feeling happy is not actually connected to having a great watch. It is much more about things like getting on well with your friends, enjoying school or your work, and getting plenty of rest and enough exercise. The watch itself can’t make a big difference. We really want something, because we want to feel good about ourselves. But things cannot make us happy, it’s experiences and relationships that do that. We might think that a watch or a new pair of shoes is the answer, but it isn’t really. The same thing happens with cars, handbags, private jets, new phones or even going to a fancy restaurant. It’s weird to think how much of this goes on in the world.
西蒙娜·德·波伏娃的想法
An Idea From Simone de Beauvoir
有一位法国女性哲学家对为什么我们很难知道自己真正想要什么非常感兴趣，她就是西蒙娜·德·波伏娃。她于 1908 年出生于巴黎，当时第一批汽车刚刚问世；她于 1986 年去世，那时几乎每个人都有车了。她喜欢参加派对，喜欢穿漂亮的衣服，也喜欢旅行。她一生写过很多书，和另一位我们稍后会介绍的哲学家让-保罗·萨特（见第 104 页）是很好的朋友。他们几乎每天都一起吃午饭，并谈论他们正在写的书。德·波伏娃有很多朋友，经常把他们写进她的书中（这有时会让他们恼火）。她想到，我们很容易就不再关注自己真正想要的东西，而是顺从别人似乎想要的东西。她意识到，我们太在意别人的意见了，以至于忘记好好问问自己，我们真正喜欢什么。她认为找出自己真正想要的东西是一生中最重要的事情。
A philosopher who was very interested as to why it’s hard to know what we really want was a French woman called Simone de Beauvoir. She was born in Paris in 1908, when the very first cars were being made, and died in 1986, by which time nearly everyone had a car. She liked parties and wearing nice clothes, and loved travelling. She wrote many books during her life, and was very good friends with another philosopher who we’ll be meeting later—Jean-Paul Sartre (see page 104). They ate lunch together nearly every day, and would talk about the books that they were writing. De Beauvoir had lots of friends and often included them in her books (which sometimes annoyed them). She thought about how easily we stop focusing on what we really want and instead go along with what other people seem to want. She realised that we’re so aware of other people’s opinions that we forget to properly ask ourselves what we really like. She thought that finding out what you really want was the most important job in your life.
波伏娃喜欢购物，但她对东西的兴趣不在于它们昂贵或花哨。事实上，她特别热衷于廉价商店。当她在纽约发表演讲时，她喜欢去“廉价”商店，那里所有东西只需 10 美分。波伏娃认为我们真正想要的是享受生活，但我们错误地认为我们购买的物品是我们享受的关键。然而，大多数时候，更重要的是我们是否觉得我们有足够的时间和自由去做我们喜欢的事情。
De Beauvoir loved to shop, but she wasn’t interested in things just because they were expensive or fancy. In fact, she was especially keen on cheap shops. When she was in New York to give talks she loved going to ‘dime’ shops where everything cost just ten cents. De Beauvoir thought that what we really want is to enjoy our lives, but we make the mistake of thinking that the objects we buy are key to our enjoyment. However, most of the time what matters much more is whether we feel like we have enough time and the freedom to do things we like.
当你思考自己想要什么时，请记住这一点。问问自己是否真的想要它，还是只是认为自己想要。请记住，即使你没有得到你想要的东西，它也可能不是让你快乐的东西。
Remember this when you’re thinking about what you want. Ask yourself if you really want it, or whether you just think you do. Keep in mind that even if you don’t get exactly what you want, it might not have been the thing that would make you happy after all.
好主意 #4
BIG IDEA #4
当有人生气时，责任也许不在你
When Someone Is Angry, Maybe It’s Not You Who Is Responsible
当人们（尤其是父母）脾气暴躁或生气时，情况会很糟糕。有时他们会摔门、大喊大叫，或者在有人跟他们说话时咆哮。当人们表现出这种行为时，你会觉得他们在对你生气，这会让你感觉很糟糕——而且这似乎也很不公平。但是，即使看起来是这样，也许他们真正生气的并不是你。
It is horrible when people (especially parents) get grumpy or annoyed. Sometimes they slam doors or shout, or growl when someone speaks to them. When people act this way, it can feel like it’s you they’re cross with, and that makes you feel bad—and it can seem unfair as well. But, even though it seems like it, maybe it’s not really you they are upset with.
有一个古老的故事叫做《安德罗克勒斯与狮子》，故事发生在古埃及。故事中，一头狮子在夜晚徘徊在村庄周围，发出可怕的吼叫，吓得村里人人都惊恐不已。人们以为狮子在生他们的气。后来有一天，一个叫安德罗克勒斯的人在乡间散步，突然下起雨来。他躲进了一个山洞里——狮子就住在那里。安德罗克勒斯以为狮子会吃掉他，但他发现狮子的爪子上有一根刺。狮子其实并不恨村里的人。它大声咆哮是因为刺很疼，但村里的人没有意识到这一点。
There’s an old story called Androcles and the Lion, which is set in Ancient Egypt. In the story, a lion comes prowling round a village at night, roaring terribly so that everyone is very frightened. They think the lion is angry with them. Then one day, a man called Androcles is walking out in the countryside and it starts to rain. He takes shelter in a cave—where the lion lives. Androcles thinks the lion is going to eat him, but then he sees that it has a thorn in its paw. The lion didn’t really hate the people in the village. It was roaring so much because the thorn hurt, but they didn’t realise.
这个故事讲的是一些有趣的事情。愤怒的人（比如那头愤怒的狮子）通常被一些你看不见的东西所困扰。那里往往有一根刺。
The story is saying something interesting. Angry people (like the angry lion) are usually bothered about something that you can’t see. There is often a thorn in there somewhere.
这是一个非常奇怪而有趣的想法：我们觉得自己非常了解别人，但实际上我们对彼此的生活知之甚少。有很多事情我们看不到。你的父母真的不知道你在学校一整天过得怎么样——可能有很多事情你永远没时间告诉他们。他们也一样。他们在家里看起来又大又强壮，你在某些方面非常了解他们，但当你不在的时候，他们可能会遇到一些困难的事情。
It’s a very strange and interesting thought: we feel like we know people very well, but actually we only know a little bit about each other’s lives. There’s a lot we don’t see. Your parents don’t really know what it’s been like for you all day at school—there are probably lots of things that you never get around to telling them. It’s the same for them. They seem big and strong at home and you know them so well in some ways, but it is possible that difficult things happen to them during the day when you are not there.
故事中的安德鲁克里斯是个不寻常的人：他亲眼看到了狮子爪子上的刺，所以他明白了狮子脾气这么暴躁的原因。但大多数时候，你必须想象那些可能会伤害到别人的事情——那些你看不到或不知道的事情。也许你的父母在工作中参加了一个很难的会议，或者他们整天都很忙，真的很累。他们脾气暴躁是因为这些，而不是因为你。会议或忙碌的一天就像狮子爪子上的刺。因为你白天不和他们一起上班或在家，所以你可能不知道他们生气的原因，所以你觉得他们在生你的气。但可能这与你完全无关。
Androcles, in the story, was unusual: he actually got to see the thorn in the lion’s paw, so he realised why the lion was so bad tempered. But most of the time you have to imagine the things that might be hurting other people—the things you can’t see or know. Maybe your mum or dad had a difficult meeting at work, or they were very busy all day and are really tired. They’re grumpy because of that, not because of you. The meeting or the busy day is like the thorn in the lion’s paw. Because you weren’t with them at work or at home during the day, you might not know about the reason why they’re feeling cross, so you feel it’s you they are annoyed with. But probably it has nothing to do with you at all.
对我们所有人来说，不断思考那些看不见的刺是很重要的。不要因为某人心情不好或对你大发雷霆而心烦意乱——相反，试着想象可能存在的问题，并找到解决方法。
It’s important for all of us to keep thinking about the thorns we can’t see. Don’t get upset because someone is in a bad mood or snapped at you—instead, try to imagine what might be the problem, and find a way to help.
伊本西那的理念
An Idea From Ibn Sina
许多哲学家都对我们误解他人有多容易感兴趣——包括认为他们在生我们的气，而实际上他们有其他烦恼。其中最重要的一位是伊本·西纳，他有时也被称为阿维森纳。
Plenty of philosophers have been interested in how easy it is for us to misunderstand other people—including thinking they’re angry with us when it is really something else that is bothering them. One of the most important was a man called Ibn Sina, who is sometimes called Avicenna.
伊本·西那出生于约一千年前，一生大部分时间生活在伊朗（当时称为波斯）。他是一位科学家和一位非常成功的医生，许多王子和统治者都希望他成为他们的顾问。西那是一位虔诚的穆斯林，但他对各种不同的想法和宗教非常好奇，花了很多时间研究苏格拉底和亚里士多德两位希腊哲学家。伊本·西那工作非常努力。他经常熬夜读书、写作和学习。
Ibn Sina was born about a thousand years ago and lived most of his life in Iran (which was called Persia at that time). He was a scientist and a very successful doctor, and a lot of princes and rulers wanted him to be their adviser. Sina was a devout Muslim, but he was very curious about all different kinds of ideas and religions, and spent a lot of time studying two Greek philosophers in this book, Socrates and Aristotle. Ibn Sina worked extremely hard. He often stayed up late to read and write and study.
伊本·西那认为，每个人都有两部分：外在部分，每个人都可以看到；内在部分（他称之为“灵魂”），只有他们自己知道。我们通过他人的言行了解他们，但往往对他们了解不够，无法真正了解他们。令人惊讶的是，一个生活在很久以前的人在为什么你可能无法正确理解别人以及为什么你可能会认为他们生你的气，而实际上他们是因为完全不同的事情而生气时，竟然有如此好的和有用的想法。那个东西可能是你看不到的，但它是你可以学会想象的东西。
Ibn Sina thought that everyone has two parts to them: an outside part, which everyone can see, and an inside part (he called it the ‘soul’), which only they know. We learn about other people from what they do and say, but often we don’t see enough of them to get a true picture of what they are really like. It is amazing that someone who lived so long ago had such good and useful ideas about why you might not properly understand people—and why you might think they are annoyed with you, when really they are upset about something completely different. That thing might be something that you can’t see, but it’s something you can learn to imagine.
好主意 #5
BIG IDEA #5
人们不开心，但并不刻薄
People Are Unhappy, Not Mean
有些孩子对兄弟姐妹或学校里的同学不太好。他们会骂他们、欺负他们或试图破坏他们的乐趣。他们可能会假装是你的朋友，然后在你背后说一些非常刻薄的话。他们似乎只想让别人觉得自己渺小和愚蠢。成为这种欺凌的受害者真的让人心烦意乱，也让人害怕。但为什么人们会这么刻薄呢？为什么一个人想让另一个人感到痛苦呢？
Some children aren’t very nice to their brothers and sisters, or to their classmates at school. They call them names, pick on them or try to spoil their fun. They might pretend to be your friend and then say very unkind things behind your back. It seems like all they want is for other people to feel small and stupid. It can be really upsetting and frightening to be on the receiving end of this kind of bullying. But why are people mean? Why does one person want to make another person feel miserable?
答案非常令人惊讶：这是因为他们内心感到渺小和痛苦。你从外表看不出他们——他们可能看起来坚强、自信，对自己非常满意。他们可能看起来很爱笑——也许是对你笑。
The answer is very surprising: it is because they feel small and miserable inside of themselves. You wouldn’t know by looking at them—they might look strong and confident and very pleased with themselves. They might seem to laugh a lot—maybe at you.
但如果你仔细想想，没有一个真正快乐的人会想让别人不快乐。真正坚强自信的人几乎总是温柔和善地对待他人。如果某人卑鄙而霸凌，那是因为在家里，或者在过去，某事或某人让他们非常害怕。也许你永远不知道细节，但你可以想象。也许他们有一个欺负他们的哥哥。也许他们的妈妈总是指挥他们。也许他们的父母互相大喊大叫。在他们的内心深处，这个看起来如此勇敢无畏的人实际上感到悲伤和担忧。他们太害怕让任何人看到他们真正感到多么软弱，所以他们试图通过让别人受苦来让自己感觉好一些。
But if you think about it, no one who was really happy would want to make another person unhappy. People who are actually strong and confident are almost always gentle and kind to others. If someone is mean and a bully it is because at home, or in the past, something or someone has frightened them a lot. Probably you’ll never know the details, but you can imagine. Maybe they have an older brother who picks on them. Maybe their mum is always bossing them about. Maybe their parents shout at each other. Inside their head, this person who seems so brave and fearless, actually feels sad and worried. They’re too frightened to let anyone see how weak they really feel, so they try to make themselves feel better by making another person suffer.
受过伤害的人会伤害他人。如果有人对你不好，理解这一点并不能立即解决问题，但它仍然能有所帮助。它可以帮助你记住，你不应该受到虐待，这不是你做的，你也没有错。理解欺凌者或卑鄙之人的最好方法是把自己放在他们的立场上。想想你对某人不太好的时候。大多数人在某些时候都会对某人有点卑鄙，或者至少想要变得可怕，即使他们实际上没有做或说什么。这不是坏事或错误，这只是生活。现在想想你为什么对那个人卑鄙——这几乎总是因为其他事情困扰着你，而你不知道如何纠正。
Those who have been hurt, hurt others. Understanding this does not immediately solve the problem if someone is being nasty to you, but it can still help a little. It can help you to remember that you don’t deserve to be treated badly, that it’s not something you’ve done and that there isn’t anything wrong with you. The best way to understand a bully or a mean person is to put yourself in their position. Think about a time when you haven’t been very nice to someone. Most people are a bit mean to someone at some point, or have at least wanted to be horrible, even if they don’t actually do or say anything. It’s not bad or wrong, it’s just life. Now think about why you were mean to that person—it’s pretty much always because something else was bothering you that you didn’t know how to put right.
例如，如果家里有了新生儿，大孩子变得有点不耐烦是很常见的。大人认为婴儿很可爱。每个人都关心他们，说他们有多可爱，父母把所有的时间都花在照顾他们身上。如果你年龄大一点，你的父母又有了个新生儿，你生气也就不足为奇了。你可能会觉得人们应该多关注你。也许你想向别人表明你也很重要——事实上你比这个大家都爱的无聊宝宝好多了。所以你找了一个比你弱、有点幼稚的人，你开始对他们很刻薄。这让你觉得自己很强大，知道别人和你一样难过会让你感觉好一些。当然，这样做一点也不好，但这是可以理解的。有时当我们如此悲伤和愤怒时，感觉我们无能为力。意识到为什么有时你可能对别人不太好会帮助你明白为什么别人可能对你不太好。
For instance, it is quite common for older children to get a bit nasty if there is a new baby in the family. Grown-ups think babies are very sweet. Everyone pays them attention and says how lovely they are, and parents spend all their time looking after them. If you are a bit older and your parents have a new baby, it is not surprising if you get cross. You might feel like people should be paying more attention to you. Maybe you want to show other people that you’re also important—that in fact you are much better than this boring baby who everyone loves so much. So you find someone who is weaker than you, and a bit babyish, and you start being mean to them. It makes you feel powerful, and it makes you feel better to know that someone else is feeling bad like you do. Of course, doing this isn’t very nice at all, but it is understandable. Sometimes when we are so sad and angry, there doesn’t feel like anything else we can do. Realising why you might not be very nice to other people sometimes will help you to see how someone else could be not very nice to you.
理解并不能让一切突然变得完美。如果有人欺负你或伤害你，问题不会因为你能够理解他们内心一定非常不开心而消失。哲学并不能一下子解决你所有的问题。但当你理解了事情，它们就不再那么可怕了。这是一个好的开始。
Understanding doesn’t make everything suddenly perfect. If someone is bullying you or hurting you, the problem will not go away just because you are able to understand that they must be very unhappy inside. Philosophy does not solve all your problems in one go. But when you understand things they stop being so frightening. And that’s a good start.
卑鄙与不幸
Meanness and Unhappiness
找一支笔和一些纸，画一个像下面这样的表格。列出对你不好的人。然后写下你认为他们可能不快乐的原因。他们的卑鄙和不快乐可能有什么关系？
Find a pen and some paper and draw a table like the one below. Make a list of the people who are mean to you. Then write why you think they might be unhappy. How might their meanness and unhappiness be related?
卑鄙的人 Person who is being mean |
他们不开心的原因 Reasons why they might be unhappy |
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来自 Zera Yacob 的想法
An Idea From Zera Yacob
有一位哲学家对人们为什么会彼此刻薄深思，他就是泽拉·雅各布。他出生于非洲的埃塞俄比亚，大约四百年前，即 1599 年。他的父母很穷，他在一个小农场长大，但长大后成为了一名教师。
One philosopher who thought a lot about why people are mean to each other was Zera Yacob. He was born in Ethiopia in Africa, around four hundred years ago, in 1599. His parents were poor and he was brought up on a small farm, but when he grew up he became a teacher.
当时，埃塞俄比亚分裂为不同的宗教派别，彼此激烈对立，但泽拉·雅各布不想偏袒任何一方。有些人向国王说了关于他的谎言，他不得不躲藏起来。他独自在一个山洞里住了两年。这听起来可能很可怕，但他更喜欢独处，他说他在山洞里思考比在学校学到的更多。最终，一位新国王上台，泽拉·雅各布得以离开他的山洞，去城里生活。他找到了一份教一个富商孩子的工作——他是一名非常好的老师，这家人对他很好。后来他结婚生子。
At that time Ethiopia was split into different religious groups who were bitterly opposed to each other, but Zera Yacob didn’t want to take sides. Some people told lies about him to the king and he had to go into hiding. For two years he lived on his own in a cave. That might sound pretty awful, but he rather liked spending time alone and he said he learned more by thinking in his cave than he had when he was at school. Eventually a new king came to power and Zera Yacob could leave his cave and go to live in a town. He found work teaching the children of a rich businessman—he was a very good teacher and the family were kind to him. Later he got married and had a family.
泽拉·亚科布认为，每个人的生活总是相当艰难。每个人都受苦。这是一个悲伤的想法，它应该让我们彼此友善和同情。但有些人却无意中变得卑鄙和残忍。他们认为，如果他们伤害别人，就会减轻自己的痛苦。泽拉·亚科布认为，如果我们能承认自己的悲伤，我们就不会那么生气别人——世界上的痛苦也会减少。
Zera Yacob thought that life is always quite difficult for everyone. Everyone suffers. That’s a sad thought, and it should make us kind and sympathetic to each other. But some people become mean and cruel by mistake. They think that if they hurt others it will take away their own pain. Zera Yacob believed that if we can admit our own sadness it will make us less angry with other people—and the amount of pain in the world will decrease.
大创意 #6
BIG IDEA #6
不要期望太多
Don’t Expect Too Much
想象一下，你真的在期待着某件事。也许很快就是你的生日，或者你要去度假。你开始想象那会是多么美好。一切都会很美好。你会得到所有你想要的礼物，或者你每天都可以去海滩游泳。每个人都会很开心，不会出什么问题。但是，当真的到了你的生日或者你真的去度假的时候，有些事情就不对了。你会收到一些不错的礼物，但也有一些你不想要的无聊礼物。在假期里你可以游泳，但不是每天都可以：有一天你必须和妈妈去美术馆，另一天雨一直下个不停。当你不停地问“我们现在可以去海滩吗？”时，你的父母会很生气。你感到脾气暴躁，很烦躁。你很失望。你以为一切都会很棒——但现在却不是了。但有趣的是，你的生日和假期其实一点也不糟糕。它们相当不错。只是它们没有你想象的那么好。
Imagine that you are really looking forward to something. Maybe it’s your birthday soon, or you’re going on holiday. You start to imagine how nice it will be. Everything will be wonderful. You will get all the presents you want, or you’ll be able to swim at the beach every day. Everyone will be happy, and nothing will go wrong. But, when it really is your birthday or you really do go on holiday, something is not right. You get some nice presents, but some boring ones you didn’t want, too. On holiday you do get to swim, but not every day: one day you have to go to an art gallery with your mum, and on another day it rains non-stop. Your parents get annoyed when you keep asking, ‘Can we go to the beach now?’ You feel grumpy and irritated. You are disappointed. You thought it was all going to be so great—and now it isn’t. But the funny thing is, your birthday and the holiday were not really terrible at all. They were pretty good. It’s just that they weren’t as good as you’d imagined.
有时也会反过来。你可能会想象有些事情会很糟糕。也许你换了一位新老师，你听说他们很讨厌。显然他们经常大喊大叫，从不让你做任何有趣或好玩的事情。但是当新老师到来时，你会发现他们比你想象的要好得多。他们会大喊大叫，但也很有趣。他们很严格，但他们也会教你如何提高艺术水平，并让你做一些有趣的科学实验。你一直以为他们会很糟糕，所以当他们最终没有那么糟糕时，你会感到很惊喜。无论哪种方式，你是脾气暴躁还是对某事感到高兴，在很大程度上取决于你的期望。如果你期望事情完美，那么你可能会失望也就不足为奇了。如果你期望事情很糟糕，你经常会得到一个惊喜。
Sometimes it also works the other way round. You might imagine that something is going to be horrible. Maybe you’re getting a new teacher and you’ve heard that they’re really nasty. Apparently they shout a lot and never let you do anything interesting or fun. But when the new teacher arrives, they turn out to be quite a lot nicer than you had been expecting. They do shout a little, but they are kind of funny as well. They are quite strict, but they also teach you how to be better at art and let you do some fun science experiments. You’d been expecting them to be horrible, so it’s a nice surprise when they’re not that bad after all. Either way, whether you get grumpy or feel pleased about something depends a lot on your expectations. If you expect things to be perfect, it’s no surprise that you might be disappointed. If you expect things to be bad, you quite often get a nice surprise.
有一个很好的技巧可以确保你惊喜的次数多于失望的次数。如果你尽量不抱有太大的希望，那么通常事情会比你预期的更好。你会特别高兴，而实际上根本不需要做任何事情。即使有点令人失望，也要记住：事情总是可能会更糟一点。不过别担心——想象事情变糟并不会让任何坏事发生。如果你想象得到一块煤作为生日礼物，并不意味着真的会有人送你。如果你想象早上错过公共汽车，并不意味着你会错过。你对未来事物的想象并不会让它们发生。但它还有其他作用：当事情（有时）出错时，它可以保护你并让你做好准备，避免悲伤。
There is a good trick you can play to make sure you are nicely surprised more often than you are disappointed. If you try not to get your hopes up too much, then usually things will turn out better than you expected. You’ll be especially pleased, without really having to do anything at all. And even if it is a little disappointing, remember: it could always be a bit worse. Don’t worry though—imagining things going badly doesn’t make anything bad happen. If you imagine getting a lump of coal for a birthday present it doesn’t mean anyone will actually give you one. If you imagine missing the bus in the morning it does not mean you will miss it. How you imagine things in the future doesn’t make them happen. But it does something else: it protects and prepares you against sadness when things do (sometimes) go wrong.
您对未来的想象方式可能会让您在事情比您想象的更糟时感到愤怒，而在事情比您预期的要好时感到惊喜。期望值越低，对哲学家的意义就越大。
The way you imagine the future can make the difference between getting furious whenever something goes worse than you thought it would, and getting a nice surprise whenever something is a bit nicer than you had expected. Expecting less is a big part of what it means to be a philosopher.
塞涅卡的思想
An Idea From Seneca
很久以前，古罗马有一位哲学家，他花了很多时间思考人们为什么会生气。他的名字叫塞涅卡。塞涅卡是一名商人和政治家；但他也是一位重要的哲学家（有时我们会忘记，你不仅可以是哲学家，还可以是其他角色）。
There once was a philosopher who lived a long time ago in Ancient Rome who spent a lot of time thinking about why people get angry. His name was Seneca. Seneca was a businessman and a politician; however he was also an important philosopher (sometimes we forget that you can be a philosopher as well as being other things, too).
有一次，塞涅卡接到了世界上最困难的工作——他被任命为一个非常可怕的年轻人的导师，这个年轻人名叫尼禄，后来成为皇帝。如果尼禄因为某人没有对他的笑话发笑而生气，他通常会刺伤对方或将对方关进监狱。塞涅卡意识到尼禄皇帝的问题在于他的期望太高。尼禄期望一切都完美无缺，而当事情不完美时，他就会经常发脾气。
At one point, Seneca was given the most difficult job in the world—he was appointed tutor to a really terrifying young man called Nero, who later became emperor. If Nero got angry because someone didn’t laugh at one of his jokes, it wasn’t unusual for him to stab the other person or throw them in prison. Seneca realised that the problem with Emperor Nero was that his expectations were too high. Nero expected everything to be perfect and constantly lost his temper when it wasn’t.
塞涅卡告诉他，生气和心烦意乱是由乐观主义引起的。乐观意味着认为事情总是会进展顺利，正如你所希望的那样。塞涅卡认为，保持冷静和更快乐的最好方法是成为一个悲观主义者，而不是做一个乐观主义者。也就是说，一个人认为事情可能会变得很糟糕，并且通常对未来持消极态度。这是一个有趣而奇怪的想法：也许我们的幸福并不取决于实际发生的事情，而是取决于我们的期望。悲观主义者有时比乐观主义者更快乐，因为悲观主义者总是发现事情比他们想象的要好得多。
Seneca told him that getting angry and upset was caused by optimism. Optimism means thinking that things are always going to go very well and exactly as you want. Instead of being an optimist, Seneca thought that the best way to stay calm and be happier was to become a pessimist. That is, someone who assumes that things will probably turn out quite badly and generally has a negative view of the future. It’s an interesting and strange idea: that maybe our happiness does not depend on what actually happens, but on our expectations. Pessimists can sometimes be happier than optimists, because pessimists are always discovering that things are much nicer and better than they thought they would be.
好主意 #7
BIG IDEA #7
也许你只是累了
Maybe You Are Just Tired
当你心情不好时，你通常会想责怪别人。你感到厌烦和恼火，你的大脑四处寻找谁的错——你的老师、你的父母、你的朋友，也许是你的兄弟姐妹。但有时这实际上不是任何人的错。相反，有一种非常不同的解释。其实什么都没有错，你只是因为睡眠不足和疲惫而感到烦躁和烦恼。
When you are in a bad mood, you usually want to blame someone. You feel fed up and annoyed and your brain looks around to see whose fault it could be—your teacher, your parents, your friends, maybe your brother or sister. But sometimes it’s not really anyone’s fault. Instead, there’s a very different kind of explanation. Nothing is really wrong at all, you are just feeling grumpy and bothered because you haven’t been getting enough sleep and you are tired.
想象一下，你正在跑步，然后来到一座小山前。如果你刚开始跑步，精力充沛，爬上这座小山就不是问题。你不介意。看看自己能跑多快会很有趣。但是如果你已经跑了很长一段距离，腿疼，气喘吁吁，爬上这座小山就会觉得很可怕。你无法面对它。这是一座完全相同的小山，但你对它的感觉却截然不同——这完全取决于你有多累。很多事情都是这样，不仅仅是身体上的事情。也许你必须做一个相当困难的数学题。如果你精力充沛，你不介意。这很棘手，但你可以试一试。但如果你很累，感觉太难了。你不得不做这件事，这让你生气和难过。这是一样的。不同之处在于你很累。
Imagine you are running and you come to a hill. If you have just started running and you’ve got lots of energy, the hill isn’t a problem. You don’t mind. It will be fun to see how fast you can run up it. But if you’ve been running for quite a long way already and your legs ache and you’re out of breath, the hill will seem horrible. You can’t face it. It’s exactly the same hill but you feel very differently about it—and it all depends on how tired you are. It is the same with lots of things, and not only physical things either. Maybe you have to do quite a difficult maths sum. If you’re feeling full of energy, you don’t mind. It’s tricky but you can have a go. But if you are very tired, it feels too hard. It makes you angry and upset that you have to do it. It’s the same sum. The difference is that you’re tired.
被告知“也许你只是累了”确实会让人恼火。通常你不会觉得这就是你心情不好的原因。问题是你可能很累，但却没有意识到。再说一次，你的大脑没有意识到到底发生了什么。
Being told that ‘maybe you are just tired’ can be really irritating. Usually it doesn’t feel like that’s the reason why you are in bad mood. The trouble is that you can be tired but not notice. Once again, your brain doesn’t realise what’s really going on.
不仅疲劳会让你心情不好。也可能是因为你饿了，或者没有喝足够的水，或者你在家里呆了太久而没有跑动。甚至可能是冬天持续太久而你没有晒到足够的太阳。所有这些都会影响你的心情。
It is not only being tired that can put you in a bad mood. It could also be that you are hungry, or haven’t drunk enough water, or you have spent too much time indoors and have not been running around enough. It could even be that winter has been going on too long and you haven’t had enough sunshine. All these things make a difference to the mood you are in.
我们心情不好时通常不会想这些事情，相反，我们会想象自己心情不好是因为别人做了什么。我们非常生气，想对他们大喊大叫，告诉他们有多可怕。但实际上，休息一下、喝杯水、吃顿午餐或到外面玩一会可能会让我们感觉好一些。奇怪但有趣的是，你可能会忘记自己心情不好的原因可能非常简单。然而，简单原因的好处是，它们也可以简单地解决。争吵之后，想和朋友和好、让妈妈不那么忙工作或突然变得唱歌或打篮球很棒并不容易，但你可以喝杯水。你不能让学校里的恶霸变成你，但你可以吃一个三明治。
We don’t usually think about these things when we’re in a bad mood, and instead, we imagine that the reason we feel upset is because of something someone else has done. We get so wound up that we want to shout at them and tell them how horrid they are. But what will actually make us feel better might be a rest, a glass of water, some lunch or a play outside. It is odd—but interesting—that you can forget there might be very simple reasons you’re feeling upset. The good thing about simple reasons, though, is that they can be fixed simply, too. It isn’t that easy to make up with a friend after an argument, get your mum to be less busy with work or suddenly to become brilliant at singing or basketball—but you can get a glass of water. You can’t make that bully at school like you, but you can eat a sandwich.
成年人尤其不善于发现他们心情不好只是因为他们累了。成年人喜欢认为如果他们感到不安，那一定是出于一个重大而重要的原因——可能是与政治或世界事务有关，或者因为他们的老板比他们愚蠢得多。他们很难记住，心情不好可以有一个非常简单的解释：也许他们昨晚熬夜太晚了，或者应该紧急喝点橙汁。
Adults are especially bad at seeing that they might be in a bad mood just because they are tired. Adults like to think that if they feel upset it must be for a big, important reason—probably something to do with politics or world affairs, or because their boss at work is much more stupid than they could ever be. It’s hard for them to remember that a bad feeling can have a very simple explanation: maybe they just stayed up too late last night or should urgently have some orange juice.
看看我是否只是累了
A Checklist to See if I'm Just Tired
当你突然感到悲伤时，在你绝望之前，看看以下是否适用：
When you suddenly feel sad, before you despair, see if the following might apply:
•我已经几个小时没吃东西了
• I have not had anything to eat for a few hours
•我昨晚睡得很晚
• I went to bed very late last night
•今天在学校过得很忙
• I had a really busy day at school today
在纸上写下一些其他的“小”解释，说明你为什么觉得你遇到了很大的问题：
On some paper write down a few other ‘small’ explanations for feeling like you have very big problems:
松尾芭蕉的理念
An Idea From Matsuo Basho
哲学家松尾芭蕉对小而简单的事物如何对我们的生活产生重大影响很感兴趣。他生活在三百多年前的日本。他来自一个非常普通的家庭，很小的时候就在当地一位贵族家里当仆人，这位贵族是个非常好的雇主，对松尾的教育帮助很大。长大后，他独自住在一间小屋里，经常在乡间散步。他以诗人为职业，写一些非常短的俳句。这些诗非常受欢迎，所以他能赚到很多钱。但芭蕉不想过上奢侈的生活。他非常喜欢大自然，尤其喜欢树木和花朵，他喜欢看附近池塘里的青蛙。松尾芭蕉认为，我们经常感到烦恼和不安，因为我们忘记了简单的事情。我们认为只有大而复杂的事情才是重要的。
The philosopher Matsuo Basho was interested in the way that small, simple things can make a big difference to our lives. He lived in Japan over three hundred years ago. He came from a very ordinary family and when he was quite young he worked as a servant in the house of a local nobleman, who was a very good employer and helped a lot with Matsuo’s education. When he was older he lived on his own in a small hut and went for long walks in the countryside. He had a career as a poet, writing very, very short poems called haikus. They were extremely popular, so he was able to make quite a lot of money. But Basho didn’t want to live a fancy life. He was very fond of nature, particularly liking trees and flowers, and he loved watching frogs in a nearby pond. Matsuo Basho thought that we often get bothered and upset because we forget about simple things. We think that it must only be big, complicated things that are important.
松尾芭蕉喜欢告诉人们他是多么喜欢小事：早上喝一杯茶，冬天吃些简单的蔬菜（他推荐韭菜），听鸟儿啁啾，看着云朵或雨滴。他是一位重要的哲学家，即使在今天，他仍然提醒人们一个奇怪的事实：我们的情绪，以及我们对生活是愉快还是糟糕的感觉，可能取决于如此微小的事情。它们看起来很小，但对我们却有很大的影响。
Matsuo Basho liked to tell people how much he enjoyed little things: having a cup of tea in the morning, eating simple vegetables on a winter’s day (he recommended leeks), listening to a bird chirping away, looking at clouds or watching raindrops. He was an important philosopher who reminds people, even today, of the strange fact that our mood, and our feeling of whether life is pleasing or horrible, can depend on such tiny things. They seem so small, but they make a big difference to us.
好主意 #8
BIG IDEA #8
正常的事情并不正常
What Is Normal Isn’t Normal
当人们互相说一些伤人的话时，他们经常会用侮辱的语气说某人不“正常”。他们称对方为疯子、怪人或怪物——有很多不同的说法，但他们都试图暗示某人因为与众不同而很糟糕。
When people say hurtful things to each other, they often use the insult that someone isn’t ‘normal’. They call them crazy, weird or a freak—there are lots of different ways of saying it, but they’re all trying to suggest that someone is bad for being different.
问题是，人们真的不太了解什么是正常的。每个人都有“正常”的概念，但这可能是非常错误的。也许在一群朋友中，喜欢汽车或某个流行乐队是正常的，但这只在那一小部分人中是正常的——而且很可能并不是所有人都真的那么感兴趣，他们可能只是假装符合他们认为其他人喜欢的东西。在另一群朋友中，喜欢完全不同的东西可能是正常的。
The thing is, people don’t really know very much about what is normal. Everyone has an idea of ‘normal’, but it’s probably very much mistaken. Maybe in one group of friends it’s normal to be into cars or a particular pop group, but that is only normal among that small group of people—and it is likely that not all of them are really that interested anyway, they might simply pretend to fit in with what they think everyone else likes. In another group of friends it might be normal to like completely different things.
看似正常的事情也可能会发生很大变化。过去，孩子们不上学是很正常的事——相反，他们中的大多数人呆在家里，和父母一起干活，通常是在农场干活。他们会觉得坐在教室里学习世界很奇怪。但即使在今天，在一所学校里很正常的事情在另一所学校里可能很奇怪。在日本的学校里，孩子们会一起谈论他们的宠物机器狗，但如果你这样做，人们可能会认为你很奇怪。如果人们认为你不太正常，那么你可能只是有点不幸——也许你喜欢的东西在你现在所居住的世界角落里并不流行，但如果你住在其他地方，或者在不同的时间，它们就不会显得奇怪。
What seems normal can change a lot as well. It used to be normal that children didn’t go to school—instead, most of them stayed at home and worked with their parents, usually on a farm. They would think it was very strange to sit in a classroom and learn about the world. But even today, what’s normal in one school might be strange in another one. At school in Japan the children chat together about their pet robot dogs, but probably if you did that people would think you were weird. If people think you’re not quite normal, you might just be a bit unlucky—maybe the things you like are not very popular in the corner of the world you happen to live in right now, but they wouldn’t seem at all strange if you lived somewhere else, or at a different time.
事实上，性格古怪是正常的。乍一听，这听起来很疯狂。性格古怪怎么会是正常的呢？但仔细想想，就会明白。“正常”的意思是“和其他人一样”。但其他人到底是什么样的呢？回答这个问题比你想象的要棘手得多。正如我们在本书前面已经发现的那样，你无法看到任何人的全部。每个人都比他们看起来的更奇怪、更有趣：他们在半夜会有奇怪的想法，但从不告诉别人。当他们独处时，他们会做一些他们永远不会在别人面前做的有趣的事情。当他们和奶奶或妈妈在一起时，他们的行为也和他们在学校和朋友在一起时完全不同。这是因为一个人在学校的表现只是他们真实性格的一小部分。你知道这一点，因为你就是这样的。学校里的其他孩子实际上比他们看起来的要不寻常得多。如果你有时觉得自己很奇怪或怪异，不要担心——你和其他人可能有很多共同点，比你想象的要多。只是其他人隐藏了自己奇怪的部分。
In fact, it is normal to be quite weird. At first that sounds crazy. How can it be normal to be strange? But it makes sense when you think about it. What ‘normal’ means is ‘like other people’. But what are other people really like? It is much trickier to answer this question than you might suppose. As we’ve already discovered earlier in this book, you don’t get to see the whole of anyone. Everyone is much more strange and interesting than they may seem: they have weird thoughts in the middle of the night that they never tell other people about. When they’re on their own they do funny things that they would never do in front of other people. They act completely differently, too, when they are with their granny or their mum than the way they do at school with their friends. That’s because the way someone is at school is only a little part of who they really are. You know this, because that’s what you are like. Other children at school are really much more unusual than they appear. If you feel odd or weird sometimes, don’t worry—you probably have a lot more in common with others than you think. It is just that the others are keeping the odder bits of themselves hidden.
你可能会想：“我不在乎自己是否正常。正常有什么好处呢？”这是个好问题。很多哲学家在不再那么在意别人的想法时，开始有了好的想法。也许你也会这样。
You might think: ‘I do not care about being normal. What is so good about being normal anyway?’ It’s a good question. A lot of philosophers started to have good ideas when they stopped caring so much about what others thought. Maybe you will, too.
阿尔贝·加缪的理念
An Idea From Albert Camus
阿尔贝·加缪是一位法国哲学家，1913 年出生于阿尔及利亚。当时，阿尔及利亚是法国的一部分。他的父母很穷——父亲在农场工作，母亲是清洁工。然而，当地的学校非常好，他接受了良好的教育。他喜欢去海边，踢足球很有天赋——他是一名守门员，他效力的球队非常成功。他觉得踢足球比读过的所有书都更能让他学到哲学知识。
Albert Camus was a French philosopher who was born in Algeria in 1913. At that time, Algeria was part of France. His parents were very poor—his father worked on a farm and his mother was a cleaner. However, the local school was very good and he got an excellent education. He loved going to the beach and was very talented at football—he was a goalkeeper and the team he played for was hugely successful. He felt that he learned more about philosophy from playing football than from all the books he read.
长大后，加缪搬到了巴黎。他是一名报社记者，喜欢去咖啡馆。加缪对人们内心的奇怪感觉很感兴趣——尤其是当他们兴奋或悲伤时。他最大的目标之一是说服人们不要太在意别人如何评价他们。自己这样做可以让你感觉不那么担心，不那么孤独，并让你有信心去探索新事物。
When he was older, Camus moved to Paris. He worked as a newspaper journalist and liked going to cafés. Camus was interested in the strange feelings that go on inside people—especially when they are excited or sad. One of his biggest aims was to convince people to worry a bit less about how other people judge them. Doing this yourself can make you feel less worried, less lonely, and give you the confidence to explore new things.
好主意 #9
BIG IDEA #9
没人知道……
No One Knows...
在很多方面，成年人似乎都非常了不起。他们似乎知道所有的答案，但他们背后有一个大秘密：他们并非无所不知。通常，成年人只知道少数几件事。一个成年人可能对树木或发动机了解很多，但对电话的实际工作原理或英国国王和王后的历史却知之甚少。另一个成年人可能对书籍或电力了解很多，但对南极洲或体育却知之甚少。
In lots of ways, adults can seem very impressive. They may seem to have all the answers, but there is a big secret about them: they do not know everything. Usually an adult only knows about a few things. One adult might know a lot about trees or engines, but know very little about how a phone really works or the history of the kings and queens of England. Another might know a lot about books or electricity, but very little about Antarctica or sports.
事实上，有很多事情——甚至是重要的事情——是绝对没有人知道的。例如，没有人真正了解如何让城市变得非常漂亮。如果他们知道的话，世界上所有的城市都会美丽、干净、宜居。但大多数城市都不是这样的。也没有人知道管理学校的最佳方式——这就是为什么世界上有很多学校不是很好，为什么不是每个老师都很棒。这并不是因为成年人愚蠢，而是因为问题太难了。如果你想看到一个成年人一脸困惑，你可以问他们现在几点了。不是“现在几点了？”（他们可能知道！），而是时间本身是什么？这是一个很难的问题，不是吗？或者，如何问问他们为什么有些笑话比其他笑话更有趣，或者狗是否知道自己是狗。我们保证他们不会知道。几乎没有人真正知道这些事情。
In fact, there are lots and lots of things—even important things—that absolutely no one knows. No one really understands how to make cities very nice, for instance. If they did know, all the cities in the world would be beautiful, clean and lovely to live in. But most of them are not. No one knows the very best way to run a school, either—that’s why there are lots of schools in the world that aren’t very good and why not every teacher is wonderful. This isn’t because adults are stupid, but because the problems are so difficult. If you want to see a grown-up looking confused you could ask them what time is. Not ‘what is the time?’ (they will probably know that!), but what is time itself? That is a difficult question, isn’t it? Or, how about asking them why some jokes are funnier than others, or whether a dog knows that it is a dog. We promise you they will not know. Hardly anyone really knows anything about those things.
成年人在很多问题上都存在分歧：国家应该如何治理？我们应该如何应对污染？谁应该获得最高薪水？你也可以谈论这些事情，即使你不知道也没关系——因为成年人也不知道。
Adults disagree about a huge range of issues: how should the country be run? What should we do about pollution? Who should get the biggest salaries? You can have conversations about these things, too, and it does not matter if you don’t know for sure—because adults don’t know either.
成年人确实知道很多。但是——这一点很重要，要不断提醒自己——他们往往对自己生活中很多真正重要的事情非常不确定。他们可能看起来非常了不起：他们有工作，他们与某人结婚，他们可能有房子和车。然而，内心深处，他们可能并不真正知道为什么他们要和这个人结婚（也许和别人结婚会更好），他们想知道他们是否应该做一份不同的工作，他们担心支付账单。也许他们不知道他们是否应该要求升职在工作中或度假时，他们总是觉得很无聊。他们觉得自己必须做出很多重大决定，但他们不知道自己做出的决定是否正确。这就是为什么他们经常看起来很严肃，有时还会变得暴躁。
Adults do know a lot. But—and it’s important to keep reminding yourself of this—they’re often very unsure about a lot of really important things in their own lives. They can seem very impressive: they’ve got a job, they are married to someone and they might own a house and a car. Inside, though, they probably do not really know why they got married to this person (maybe it would have been better with someone else), they wonder if they should be doing a different job and they worry about paying the bills. Perhaps they don’t know whether they should ask for a promotion at work or where it would be good to go on holiday. They feel they have to make a lot of big decisions but they don’t know if they’re making the right ones. That’s why they often look very serious, and sometimes get snappy.
有一天，你也会成为成年人。现在看来，这似乎还很遥远，但奇怪的是，你不会感觉与现在有太大不同。你还是你，即使你有工作，学会开车，甚至可能有自己的孩子。你会做所有这些大事，但仍有许多事情你不知道——而且你可能永远不会知道。
One day, you will be an adult too. It might seem quite a long way off now, but the strange thing is that you won’t feel so very different from the way you do at the moment. You’ll still be you, even though you’ll have a job, will have learnt to drive a car and might even have children of your own. You will have done all these huge things, but there’ll still be lots of things you don’t know—and that you may never know.
大脑中如果有一小部分始终记住，成年人不知道很多重要的事情，这是一件好事。这并不意味着成年人很笨（尽管想象他们也有思维问题也挺好），这只意味着他们和其他人一样。记住成年人并非无所不知，可以让他们中的一些人不那么可怕。这会让你为他们感到一丝遗憾，并帮助你认识到你并没有那么不同，你的想法在某些方面与他们的想法同样重要。当我们意识到我们都面临着类似的问题时，我们实际上可以很好地对待彼此。我们都可以尝试思考——这最终会让整个世界变得更聪明。
It is good to have a little part of your brain that constantly keeps in mind that there are lots of important things that adults don’t know. This does not mean that adults are stupid (even though it is quite nice to imagine they have thinking problems, too), it just means that they are the same as everyone else. Remembering that adults do not know everything can make some of them a little less frightening. It makes you feel a bit sorry for them, and it helps you to see that you are not so different, and that your ideas are, at points, just as important as theirs. We can actually be quite nice to each other when we realise that we’re all faced with similar problems. And we can all have a go at thinking—which is what ends up making the whole world cleverer.
我想进一步了解的事情
Things I Would Like to Know More About
找一支笔和一些纸，列出你想了解更多信息的事情。例如：
Find a pen and some paper and make a list of things you would like to find out more about. For example:
•动物到底理解多少呢？
• How much do animals really understand?
•我们为什么会做梦？
• Why do we dream?
•其他星球上存在生命吗？
• Is there life on other planets?
•互联网是好是坏？
• Is the internet bad or good?
勒内·笛卡尔的理念
An Idea From René Descartes
勒内·笛卡尔是一位法国哲学家，生于 1596 年，一生大部分时间生活在巴黎和阿姆斯特丹。他留着一小撮尖胡子，经常戴着一顶大黑帽。他数学很好，但也当了好几年兵。他最喜欢的是思考。他经常整个早上都躺在床上思考。他的朋友认为他很懒——但实际上他一点也不懒，因为思考是一项艰苦的工作。在一个非常寒冷的日子里，他坐在一个大烤箱里（当时不是很热），想着人们真正知道的东西是多么少。他惊讶于人们自以为知道的东西竟然如此之多，但实际上却一无所知。人们没有意识到，他们所相信的很多事实实际上只是一种观点。而观点很容易出错。
René Descartes was a French philosopher who was born in 1596 and lived most of his life in Paris and Amsterdam. He had a little pointed beard and often wore a large black hat. He was very good at maths, but he also spent quite a few years as a soldier. What he liked best was thinking. He often used to stay in bed all morning just to think. His friends thought he was very lazy—though actually he wasn’t at all, because thinking is hard work. On one extremely cold day he sat in a large oven (it wasn’t very hot at the time) and thought about how little anyone really knows for sure. He was amazed by how much people think they know, but don’t really. What people don’t realise is how so much of what they believe is fact is really just an opinion. And opinions can quite easily be wrong.
笛卡尔非常善于思考。他认为聪明意味着能够思考和好奇很多事情。令他真正困惑的一件事是狗是否能独立思考。狗会思考月亮有多远，还是会问自己一个问题？他还对思想和物理事物之间的差异感到困惑。你可以说你的手指长 6.5 厘米，你可以测量它来看看这是否正确。但你不能用尺子来测量一个想法。笛卡尔从未很好地解答过这些难题——但他因提出有趣的问题而闻名。
Descartes was very good at feeling puzzled. He thought that being clever meant being able to think and wonder about a lot of things. One thing that really puzzled him was whether a dog can think for itself. Does a dog think about how far away the moon is, or ask itself a question? He was also very puzzled by the difference between a thought and a physical thing. You can say that your finger is 6.5cm long, and you can measure it to see whether that is true. But you can’t use a ruler to measure an idea. Descartes never quite worked out a good answer to these puzzles—but he became famous for asking interesting questions.
笛卡尔也喜欢别人无知的想法，因为这样他就会感到更加自信。人们表现得好像他们知道各种各样的事情，但实际上他们不知道。他们似乎确切地知道一切应该如何运作，什么是好工作，你应该如何利用你的空闲时间，如何管理一个国家，谁应该掌权，学校应该教什么。
Descartes also liked how the idea of the ignorance of other people could make him feel more confident. People act as if they know all kinds of things, but they don’t really. They seem to know exactly how everything should work, what a good job is, what you should do with your free time, what’s the right way to run a country, who should be in charge and what should be taught in schools.
但实际上人们并不知道这些问题的最佳答案。他们并不愚蠢——只是这些问题太难了，我们还没有找到正确的答案。每个人都有机会成为思考者。
But actually people don’t know the best answers to these things. They aren’t stupid—it’s just that the questions are so hard we haven’t worked out the right answers yet. Everyone has the opportunity to be a thinker.
大创意 #10
BIG IDEA #10
礼貌很重要
Politeness Matters
礼貌似乎很无聊。可能有些时候，你的妈妈或爸爸走进你的房间，问你“今天过得怎么样？”但你不太想回答。这不是一个很有趣的问题。也许你正在看杂志，吃着吐司，甚至都没有抬头。或者你的祖父母在你生日时送了一本书。这是一本不错的书，但你不想给他们发感谢信，也不想给他们打电话。你可能很忙，或者你有点害羞。也许还有一次，你的爸爸给你做了一些非常美味的午餐。你真的很喜欢吃，但你为什么要告诉他它很好吃呢？他是你的爸爸。他知道它很好吃——是他做的！
It can seem quite boring to have to be polite. There’s probably some times that your mum or dad comes into your room and asks, ‘How’d you get on today?’ but you don’t feel much like answering. It’s not a very interesting question. Maybe you are reading a magazine and eating some toast, and you don’t even look up. Or maybe your grandparents send you a book for your birthday. It’s quite a nice book, but you don’t want to send them a thank you letter, or ring them up. You might be busy or maybe you feel a bit shy. Perhaps another time, your dad makes you something really tasty for lunch. You really enjoyed eating it, but why would you need to tell him it was nice? He’s your dad. He knows it’s nice—he made it!
你喜欢你的父母（大多数时候），也喜欢你的祖父母，但也许你不认为如果你回答或说谢谢，或者说“那真是太好了，谢谢你的安排”，对他们来说这很重要。他们是成年人，而你只是个孩子。他们可以开车，有信用卡。你说什么或不说什么对他们来说似乎没有什么区别。
You like your parents (most of the time), and your grandparents, too, but maybe you don’t imagine that it matters much to them if you answer or say thanks or say, ‘That was really lovely, thanks for making it.’ They’re grown-ups and you are just a kid. They can drive a car and have credit cards. It doesn’t feel like it could make any difference to them what you say—or don’t say.
有趣的是，成年人的内心并不像他们表面上看起来那么坚强。他们很容易担心和受伤。他们担心爱情，担心工作，担心你。如果你不回答父母问你今天过得怎么样的问题，他们会担心你会生他们的气。如果他们为你做了点东西吃，你不说谢谢，他们会担心他们不能取悦你。你的祖父母想送你一份你喜欢的礼物，如果他们没有收到你的回信，他们会担心你不喜欢它——更重要的是，你不喜欢他们。
The funny thing is that, on the inside, grown-ups are not as strong as they seem. They worry and get hurt easily. They worry about love, they worry about their jobs, they worry about you. If you do not answer when your parents ask you about your day, they’ll worry that you might be cross with them. If you don’t say thank you when they make something for you to eat, they’ll worry that they can’t please you. Your grandparents want to give you a present you like, and if they don’t hear from you, they’ll worry that you didn’t like it—and more importantly, that you don’t like them.
你通常没有意识到成年人实际上是多么的不确定。你没有意识到你只需说几句话或什么都不说就能伤害他们的感情。你可以让他们感到悲伤或愚蠢。想到你有这种力量真是奇怪。成年人比你想象的更像你。
You don’t usually realise how unsure grown-ups actually are. You don’t realise that you can hurt their feelings with just a few words, or by not saying anything. You can make them feel sad or silly. It’s strange to think that you have this power. Grown-ups are much more like you than you might imagine.
以前你可能觉得礼貌的原因是其他人比你强大，如果你不善待他们，他们会生气。事实并非如此。礼貌很重要，因为人是脆弱的，需要小心对待。
It may have seemed to you before that the reason for being polite is that other people are more powerful than you and they will get angry if you are not nice to them. Far from it. Politeness matters because people are fragile and need to be handled with care.
我们通常不是有意伤害别人的感情，但有时我们只是没有意识到我们可以伤害别人，或者我们忘记了人们很容易受到伤害。你可能并不总是记得，不回应别人可能会让他们担心或难过。这似乎是一件小事——只是抬头说“嗨——学校很好”，或者“我喜欢这本书”，或者“谢谢你为我做午餐，爸爸”。然而，这些并不是小事。它们是强有力的话语，可以安慰任何人，并给他们带来微笑，即使是活在地球上时间是你的五倍的人。
We don’t usually mean to hurt people’s feelings, but sometimes we just do not realise that we can, or we forget that people get hurt easily. You might not always remember that by not responding to someone you could make them worried or sad. It seems such a little thing—just looking up and saying ‘Hi—school was fine,’ or, ‘I liked the book,’ or, ‘Thanks for making me lunch, dad.’ These aren’t little things really, though. They are powerful words that can comfort and bring a smile to the face of anyone, even someone who has been alive on the earth for five times as long as you have.
孔子的思想
An Idea From Confucius
大约两千五百年前，中国有一位最重视礼仪的哲学家。他的名字是孔子。他的父亲是一名军人，但不幸的是，孔子很小的时候父亲就去世了，从此家里就一贫如洗。离开学校后，孔子开始从事政府官员的职业，最终成为中国各地地方统治者的重要顾问。孔子生活的时代，军队的将军可以为所欲为——他们之所以掌权，是因为他们比任何人都强大。
One of the philosophers who thought and cared most about politeness lived in China about two-and-a-half thousand years ago. His name was Confucius. His father was a soldier, but sadly he died when Confucius was still very young, and after that the family were quite poor. When he left school, Confucius started a career as a government official and eventually he became an important adviser to the local rulers of different parts of China. Confucius lived at a time when the generals of armies could do what they wanted—they were in charge because they were stronger than anyone else.
他们的举止常常很差。他们说话时咕哝、咒骂，而且不看别人。
Their manners were frequently very bad. They grunted and swore and didn’t look at people when they spoke.
孔子认为这是一个非常严重的问题。他认为政府必须善，善的一个重要部分是注意礼貌和礼节。他花了很多心思来思考鞠躬（我们握手的中国版本），以及两个人应该如何鞠躬，这样双方都不会觉得被冒犯或伤害。孔子知道礼貌很重要，因为错误的言语——用他的话说——就像剑一样伤人。
Confucius thought that this was a very serious problem. He believed that government had to be good and that an important part of goodness was paying attention to manners and etiquette. He thought a lot about bowing (the Chinese version of our handshakes), and how two people should bow to one another so that neither side would feel offended or hurt in the process. Confucius knew that manners matter, because the wrong words can be—as he put it—as wounding as a sword.
大创意 #11
BIG IDEA #11
我们为什么会拖延
Why We Procrastinate
您可能不知道“procrastinate”这个词，或者您以前听说过它但不确定它的具体含义。这是一个相当不寻常的词。但是，即使您以前从未听说过它，您可能知道它的含义。Procrastinate 由两个拉丁词组成：pro和cras。Pro的意思是“朝着”，cras 的意思是“明天”。它们合在一起的意思是“推迟做某事 — — 直到明天或其他时间”。也许您有时也会这样做。想象一下，您需要为学校做一些事情：这是一篇关于您在假期所做事情的论文。这是写给一位相当可怕的老师的，所以您想把它写得很好，并且在某种程度上，您对此感到很兴奋。这将是一个漫长的过程，您被要求使用字典。你有整个周末。星期五你想，“我明天再做”。星期六你想，“我星期天再做”。周日你会想，“我今晚就做。”但周日晚上你意识到：现在做已经太晚了。现在你对自己的拖延感到厌烦。
You might not know the word ‘procrastinate’, or maybe you’ve heard it before but are not sure exactly what it means. It’s quite an unusual word. However, even if you’ve never heard it before, you probably do know about the thing that it means. Procrastinate is made from two Latin words: pro and cras. Pro means ‘towards’ and cras means ‘tomorrow’. Together they mean ‘putting off doing something—until tomorrow, or some other time’. Perhaps you do this sometimes, too. Imagine that you have something you need to do for school: it’s a piece of writing about what you did on holiday. It is for quite a scary teacher, so you want to make it very good and, in a way, you’re excited about it. It’s going to be long and you’ve been asked to use a dictionary. You’ve got the whole weekend. On Friday you think, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’. On Saturday you think, ‘I’ll do it on Sunday’. On Sunday you think, ‘I’ll do it tonight’. But on Sunday evening you realise: it’s too late to do it now. Now you’re fed up with yourself for procrastinating.
指责你懒惰很容易，但事情比这更复杂。我们需要找出我们为什么以这种方式拖延事情（你不是唯一这样做的人——几乎每个人都有这个问题）。幸运的是，哲学的一个有用之处是，它不会让你得到对自己感到恼火，它可以告诉你为什么你和其他人会遇到这个问题。
It would be easy to accuse you of being lazy, but it’s more complicated than that. We need to find out why we put things off in this way (you’re not the only one who does it—almost everyone has this problem). Luckily, one of the useful things about philosophy is that instead of letting you get annoyed with yourself, it can give you some answers as to why you—and other people—have a problem.
导致你拖延的主要原因是恐惧。这听起来有点奇怪，因为你可能并不觉得自己害怕做作业。但也许在某种程度上你感到害怕——害怕做不到你想要的那么好。你可能在脑海里描绘了你的作业应该有多好，这让你很难接受它没有达到你想要的效果。问题是，如果你开始了，但结果却不如你所愿，那么这个困难的想法可能会成真。所以你推迟开始，以避免失望的恐惧。如果你不开始，你就不会把事情搞砸。你不会做错任何事情。拖延的人并不懒惰；他们往往只是完美主义者，无法忍受没有把事情做对的痛苦。
The main thing that makes you procrastinate is fear. That sounds odd at first, because you probably don’t feel like you are afraid of doing your homework. But maybe in some way you are scared—scared of not doing as well as you want to. You might have a picture in your mind of how good your homework should be, and it makes the idea of it not being as good as you want it to be difficult to think about. The problem is that if you start and it doesn’t turn out as well as you would like, the difficult idea might come true. So you put off starting to avoid the fear of disappointment. If you don’t start, you can’t spoil anything. You can’t get anything wrong. People who procrastinate aren’t lazy; they are often just perfectionists, who can’t bear the pain of not quite getting things right.
解决拖延问题的办法不是让自己越来越恼火。相反，你必须说服自己，即使事情有点不对，也值得去做。你还需要接受一个事实，很多事情实际上比看起来要棘手得多——所以你不可能总是第一次就做对（甚至第二次或第十次也做不对）。这并非不可能——你只需要坚持下去。你可能会觉得别人比你更擅长做某事，但你无法看到别人先做的所有练习。他们并不是神奇地擅长做事。他们犯了很多很多的错误。他们成功的原因不是他们没有遇到任何问题，而是他们坚持不懈。
The solution to putting work off isn’t to get more and more annoyed with yourself. Instead, you have to convince yourself that things are worth doing even if they are a bit wrong. You also need to accept that lots of things are actually much trickier than they look—so you can’t always get them right the first time (or maybe even the second or the tenth time). It’s not impossible—you just have to keep going. It might feel like other people are better at things than you, but you don’t get to see all the practice other people had to do first. They are not just magically good at doing things. They made lots and lots of mistakes. What made them successful is not that they had no problems, but that they kept going.
当对可能无法按预期完成某件事的恐惧被对无法完成任何事的更大、更严重的恐惧所消除时，你最终就能开始工作了。
You will be able to finally get down to work when the fear of maybe not doing something quite as well as you’d like is wiped out by the greater and more serious fear of not doing anything at all.
亚历山大的希帕提娅的思想
An Idea From Hypatia of Alexandria
希帕蒂娅是罗马帝国末期的一位哲学家。她于公元 405 年去世，当时，一支庞大的日耳曼部落——哥特人——攻占了罗马城。
Hypatia was a philosopher who lived at the end of the Roman Empire. She died in 405, around the same time as a huge German tribe—the Goths—attacked and captured the city of Rome itself.
希帕蒂娅住在埃及地中海沿岸的亚历山大，那里以拥有世界上最高的灯塔和最好的图书馆而闻名。希帕蒂娅教授数学、音乐和哲学。她对让困难的事情变得更容易理解非常感兴趣。她的父亲也是一名教师，他们一起写了第一本儿童哲学书（虽然里面的数学比这本书多，因为当时人们还没有像我们这样把不同的科目分开）。
Hypatia lived in Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, which was famous for having the tallest lighthouse and the best library in the world. Hypatia taught mathematics and music as well as philosophy. She was very interested in making difficult things easier to understand. Her father was a teacher as well and together they wrote one of the first philosophy books for children (though it had more maths in it than this one, because at that time people did not split up different subjects the way we do).
希帕蒂娅是一位非常出色的老师，她是一个非常冷静和友善的人。她相信循序渐进的重要性，并确信每个人最终都有能力学到很多东西。但是，她说，我们必须从一无所知开始——这不是我们的错，这是不可避免的。她没有说她的学生懒惰，而是试图真正理解他们觉得困难的地方。她认为我们不愿意做困难的事情，因为我们没有被教导如何从最容易、最简单的步骤开始。我们会害怕，我们会拖延，但正如希帕蒂娅所知道的，我们不仅仅是懒惰。
Hypatia was famous for being a very good teacher—she was an extremely calm and friendly person. She believed in the importance of taking small steps, and was sure that everyone had the ability to learn a lot, eventually. But, she said, we have to start out not knowing things—that’s not our fault, it’s inevitable. Instead of calling her students lazy, she tried to really understand what they were finding difficult. She thought we get put off from doing difficult things because we haven’t been taught how to start with the easiest, simplest steps first. We get scared, and we procrastinate, but, as Hypatia knew, we aren’t just lazy.
大创意 #12
BIG IDEA #12
为什么很难知道你想要怎样度过你的一生
Why It’s Hard to Know What You Want to Do With Your Life
有时人们会问你这个问题：“你长大后想做什么？”你可能觉得你应该知道。这可能有点可怕。你知道你必须做某事——因为每个人都会这样做——但你该如何找出那是什么呢？
Sometimes people ask you the question, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ You may feel that you are supposed to know. It can be a bit frightening. You know you will have to do something—because everyone does—but how are you supposed to find out what that will be?
有些孩子和年轻人觉得自己知道：他们说自己想当兽医、足球运动员、农民或牙医。这些都是很好的想法，但事情的发展往往并不像你年轻时所期望的那样。实际上，当你长大后，很难弄清楚自己应该做什么——而且完全可以理解，可能需要很长时间才能找到一个好的答案。
Some children and young people feel that they do know: they say they want to be a vet or a football player or a farmer or a dentist. These are very nice ideas, but things do not often work out quite the way you expect when you were younger. Actually, it is quite hard to figure out what you should do when you are older—and it is totally understandable that it might take a long time to find a good answer.
令人困惑的是，有些工作（只有极少数）很有名，所以你会经常听说。但这些工作之所以出名，是因为它们在某种程度上很特别，这通常意味着几乎没有人能做这些工作。几乎没有人能成为成功的演员，或者开发游戏或发明某种东西并变得非常富有。很少有人做模特或成为体育明星。实际上，这些工作可能并不好。名人通常不喜欢出名，因为如果你出名了，很多不真正了解你的人会因为嫉妒而批评你、说你的坏话。从外表看并不是这样，也不是媒体所描绘的那样，但这是事实。幸运的是，有很多有趣的工作你可以做，你可能很少听说。
One confusing thing is that some kinds of job (just a very small number) are famous, so you hear about them a lot. But these jobs are famous because they’re special in some way, and that usually means that hardly anyone gets to do them. Hardly anyone becomes a successful actor, or develops games or invents something and becomes very rich. Very few people work as a model or become a sports star, either. And actually, these jobs might not be very nice. Famous people don’t usually enjoy being famous, because if you are famous a lot of other people who do not really know you criticise you and say mean things about you because they are jealous. It does not look this way from the outside, and it is not what the media portrays, but it’s the truth. Fortunately, there are lots of interesting jobs you can do that you might not hear much about.
那么，你如何才能确定自己想做什么呢？一个好的答案是，你可以停止思考什么可能会取悦别人或什么可能会让你赚钱，而是开始专注于你真正喜欢的事情。也许你喜欢组织事情，或者有创造力或解决问题。也许你喜欢向别人解释事情，或者你对人们如何做饭感兴趣，或者你喜欢和别人谈论事情并听取他们的意见。这些事情（目前）听起来不像工作，这没关系——它们是你未来工作中最重要的部分。
So how do you work out what you want to do? A good answer is that you could stop thinking about what might please other people or what might make you money and start to focus on what you really enjoy. Maybe you like organising things, or being creative or solving problems. Maybe you like explaining things to others, or you’re interested in how people make food or you like talking about things with other people and hearing what they have to say. It doesn’t matter that these things don’t (yet) sound like jobs—they are the most important bits of the jobs of your future.
在这种情况下谈论你“喜欢”什么似乎很奇怪。享受和乐趣听起来可能与工作相反，但如果你想擅长某件事，你就需要享受它。你不必知道你想做什么实际工作，你只需要集中精力做你喜欢做的建设性的事情，并擅长它们。工作是一种奇怪的混合，既要做别人想做的事（这样你才能得到报酬），又要找到你喜欢花时间做的事情（这样你才能做好）。
It can seem quite strange to talk about what you ‘enjoy’ in this context. Enjoyment and fun can sound like the opposite of work, but if you want to be good at something you need to enjoy it. You don’t have to know yet what actual job you would like to do, you just have to concentrate on doing constructive things that you like to do, and getting good at them. Work is a strange mixture of having to do what other people want (so you can get paid) and finding things you like spending your time doing (so you can do them well).
你可能没有想过的一件重要的事情是你喜欢玩什么游戏以及你喜欢怎么玩。当你考虑什么时候想做什么时，这真的很有用你长大了。正如我们之前提到的，玩耍并不是工作真正的对立面——事实上，孩子们在玩耍时所做的事情是一种工作练习。重要的不是游戏本身——而是你做游戏的方式。也许当你用乐高积木搭建东西时，你真的很喜欢按照说明做——这可能意味着你会喜欢在办公室工作。或者，也许你喜欢在开始之前整理乐高积木，把所有相同的颜色和形状放在一起，这样你就知道每样东西的位置——这可能意味着你会喜欢一份需要精确和清楚自己在做什么的工作，比如药剂师或验光师。或者，也许你喜欢随心所欲，想做什么就做什么，从不听从指令——这可能意味着你想从事一些有创意的工作，比如广告公司的艺术总监或平面设计师。这些只是几个例子，但它们表明了一种模式：工作比你最初想象的更像游戏。许多成年人对工作感到不满，因为他们的工作不像他们以前喜欢的游戏。当他们选择工作时，他们可能没有充分考虑他们年轻时喜欢做什么——他们为此付出了沉重的代价。
One important thing to consider that you might not have thought about is what games you like to play and how you like to play them. This can be really helpful when thinking about what you might want to do when you are older. As we mentioned before, play is not really the opposite of work—in fact, what children do when they are playing is a kind of practice for work. It is not the actual game that counts—but the way you do it. Maybe when you’re building stuff with Lego you really enjoy following the instructions—that might mean you’d enjoy working in an office. Or maybe you like sorting out the Lego bricks before you start, putting all the same colours and shapes together so you know where everything is—that might mean you would enjoy a job where you have to be precise and clear about what you’re doing, like a pharmacist or an optician. Or perhaps you like to freestyle and make whatever comes to mind first, never following the instructions—that might mean you’d like being something creative like an art director at an advertising agency, or a graphic designer. These are just a few examples, but they show a pattern: work is more like play than you might at first think. The problem a lot of adults have with their job is that it’s not enough like the play they used to enjoy. When they were choosing their jobs they probably didn’t think enough about what they liked doing when they were younger—and they are paying a heavy price for it.
让·雅克·卢梭的理念
An Idea From Jean-Jacques Rousseau
让·雅克·卢梭是18世纪瑞士哲学家，生于 1712 年至 1778 年。他的父亲在日内瓦做钟表小生意，父亲喜欢给小让·雅克读书。长大后，卢梭喜欢音乐，喜欢独自长途散步。他非常独立。十几岁的时候，有一次他去日内瓦周围的田野里散步。当他回到城里时，城门关闭了（当时许多城市都被城墙包围，晚上城门都关闭）。他没有等到天亮，而是开始了一次冒险，一路走到下一个国家：法国。晚年卢梭名声大噪，但他从未赚到很多钱——不过这没关系，因为他认为过简单、平凡的生活比富有和住大房子更好。
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Swiss philosopher who lived in the 18th century, from 1712 to 1778. His father had a small business making watches in Geneva, and he loved reading to young Jean-Jacques. As he got older, Rousseau liked music and going for long walks on his own. He was very independent. One time, when he was a teenager, he went out walking in the fields around Geneva. When he got back to the city, the gates were shut (in those days many cities were surrounded by walls and at night the gates were closed). Instead of waiting for the morning, he set off on an adventure, and walked all the way to the next country: France. Later in his life, Rousseau became very famous, but he never made much money—that was fine though, because he thought it was nicer to live a simple, ordinary life than to be rich and live in a grand house.
卢梭的一个伟大思想是，儿童的内心往往比成人更活跃。他担心，成人不仅学得更多，而且实际上忘记了他们小时候已经学到的重要知识。卢梭认为，成人不应该总是教孩子，而应该有时尝试向孩子学习。他还说，我们应该努力寻找适合自己天性的工作。这听起来可能很明显，但事实并非如此，因为我们经常受到其他人对好工作的看法的引导。卢梭非常重视儿童游戏；他说，这是我们开始意识到长大后可以做什么事情的第一次时刻。
One of Rousseau’s big ideas was that children are often more alive inside than adults. He worried that instead of just learning more, adults actually forget the important things they already learnt when they were little. Instead of adults always teaching children, Rousseau thought that they should sometimes try to learn from children. He also said that we should try to find work that suits our own nature. It might sound obvious, but it isn’t really, because so often we’re guided by what other people think a good job is. Rousseau took children’s games very seriously; they were, he said, the first moment when we start to realise what sort of things we might do when we are older.
大创意 #13
BIG IDEA #13
好事出乎意料地艰难
Good Things Are (Unexpectedly) Hard
有些事情显然很难做到。能够骑自行车走钢丝真是太棒了，但要学会如何做到这一点，当然需要多年的练习，以及大量的摔倒和事故。
Some things are obviously very difficult to do. It would be brilliant to be able to ride a bicycle along a tightrope, but of course it would take years and years of practice and lots of falls and accidents to learn how to do that.
还有一些事情看起来很容易做到。你可能会看到有人站在舞台上表演喜剧——他们看起来很放松，只是说出他们想到的任何话。这看起来好像成为一名喜剧演员很容易，但实际上，为了让它看起来如此容易，他们已经在家里练习了好几年。他们很可能站在镜子前，认真思考在讲笑话时是否应该抬起一边眉毛，或者在讲另一个笑话时把左手放在口袋里。除此之外，在你看到他们表演之前，他们已经失败了很多次。他们会讲一些没人觉得好笑的笑话，他们会被嘘和嘲笑，并被告知他们不行。你看不到他们所做的所有练习，以及所有他们所面临的困难。看上去很容易，但实际上并不容易。
There are other things that look quite easy to do. You might see someone standing up on stage performing comedy—they seem to be very relaxed, just saying whatever comes into their heads. That makes it look as if it would be quite easy to be a comedian, but actually, in order to make it look so easy, they’ve been practising at home for years. It’s quite likely that they stand in front of a mirror and think seriously about whether they should raise one eyebrow while they tell a joke, or keep their left hand in their pocket when they tell another joke. On top of this, they will have failed many times before you see them perform. They will have told jokes that no one found funny, they will have been booed and heckled and told they were no good. You don’t see all the practice they have had to do and all the difficulties they have had to face. It may look easy, but actually it is not easy at all.
很多事情都是这样的。事实上，生活中几乎所有美好有趣的事情都很难做到——只是人们通常不会告诉你它们有多难。他们想鼓励你，所以他们忽略了困难——他们经历过的困难和你将来可能面临的困难。当人们假装事情并不难时，他们认为自己是在帮助你。他们担心，如果你意识到某件事有多难，你会放弃，或者不会去尝试。他们试图表现得友善。但实际上，他们正在为你以后制造麻烦。他们错误地让你在最终遇到困难时感到失望——因为你没有为困难做好准备，而是认为一切都会相对容易。
Lots of things are like this. In fact, almost all the good and interesting things in life are quite hard to do—it is just that people do not usually tell you how hard they are. They would like to be encouraging and so they ignore the difficulties—the ones they have experienced and the ones you might face in the future. When people pretend things aren’t hard in this way, they think they’re helping you. They worry that if you realise how hard something is, you will give up, or won’t give it a go. They are trying to be nice. But in reality, they are creating problems for you later on. By mistake, they’re setting you up to be disappointed when you eventually do face something difficult—because instead of being prepared for the difficulties, you thought everything would be relatively easy.
当然，也有一些事情大家都承认非常棘手，因此人们投入了大量的时间和精力来学习如何去做。例如，我们都知道学习阅读很难。所以你会得到很多帮助来应对这一挑战。教师必须上大学学习教孩子阅读。有很多给婴儿的图画书，只有几个单词，可以帮助你入门。没有人指望你在几分钟内学会阅读——当然，这需要很长时间和大量的练习，你需要很多帮助。
Of course, there are also some things that everyone admits are very tricky, and therefore a lot of time and effort is put into learning how to do them. We all know that it’s difficult to learn how to read, for instance. So you get a lot of help with this challenge. Teachers have to go to university to learn about teaching children to read. There are lots of picture books for babies, with just a few words, to help you when you are beginning. No one expects you to learn to read in a few minutes—of course it is going to take a long time and a lot of practice, and you will need a lot of help.
乐器也很难。你可能以前看过钢琴或小提琴，觉得能演奏它们会很有趣——然后你尝试了三分钟后，声音就变得很糟糕！要用小提琴演奏出简单、优美的曲调，可能需要三年时间，要真正熟练演奏，则需要更长的时间。很多事情就像学习演奏乐器一样：非常奇怪和困难。
Musical instruments are very hard, too. You have probably looked at a piano or a violin before and thought how fun it would be to be able to play it—then you tried for three minutes and it sounded horrible! It can take three years to get just a simple, nice tune out of a violin, and even more to be really good at it. Lots of things turn out to be like learning to play a musical instrument: strangely and horribly hard.
交一个好朋友很难，写一个你喜欢的故事很难，有时很难理解你的父母，或者想清楚你长大后想做什么。但人们通常不谈论这些事情很难的事实。事实上，它们常常让你认为它们应该很容易，而实际上它们可能和学读书或拉小提琴一样棘手。它们都需要很长时间，你需要——并且值得——很多帮助才能做到。当你明白事情很难，需要很长时间才能学会正确地做时，当它们出错时你就不会那么有压力了——不幸的是，有时它们会出错。大问题不是某些事情很难，而是我们一直期望它们很容易。
It’s so hard to make a good friend, it’s hard to write a story that you like, it’s hard to understand your parents sometimes, or to work out what you want to do when you are older. But people don’t usually talk about the fact that these things are difficult. In fact, they often make you think that they should be easy, while really they can be as tricky as learning to read or play the violin. They all take a long time and you need—and deserve—a lot of help with doing them. When you understand that things are difficult and will take ages to learn to do properly, you will get less stressed when they go wrong—which sometimes, unfortunately, they will. The big problem is not that certain things are hard, it is that we keep expecting them to be easy.
我想学的困难的事情（有一天）
Things That Are Hard That I Would Like to Learn (One Day)
在纸上列出你想学的东西以及你将用新技能做什么。例如：
On some paper, make a list of things of things that you would like to learn to do, as well as what you will do with your new skill. For example:
•如何讲另一个国家的语言……
然后我会和那里的人交朋友。
• How to speak another country’s language…
and then I’ll make friends with someone from there.
•如何自信地跳舞……
然后我会邀请某人和我一起跳舞。
• How to dance with confidence…
and then I’ll ask someone to dance with me.
•如何骑自行车……
然后我将去一个新奇而令人兴奋的地方旅行。
• How to ride a bike…
and then I’ll travel somewhere new and exciting.
•如何... __________
• How to... __________
然后我会... __________
and then I’ll... __________
弗里德里希·尼采的观点
An Idea From Friedrich Nietzsche
对“好事难求”最感兴趣的哲学家是弗里德里希·尼采。他出生于 1844 年，即 19 世纪中叶。他小时候很严肃，学习成绩很好——尽管他对就读的极其严格的学校有复杂的感情。他也经常与姐姐和母亲争吵。尼采长大后，曾在大学当过一段时间老师，但他不是一个很好的老师，而且经常身体不适。所以他决定不教书，而是去旅行。他花了很多时间住在瑞士的山区，留着大胡子。他看起来很凶悍，但他很有礼貌，经常开玩笑。他写了很多书，但一开始几乎没有人对这些书感兴趣，而且只卖出了几本。然而，在他去世后，尼采的书变得非常有名，很多人都读过。
The philosopher who was most interested in the way that good things are difficult was a man called Friedrich Nietzsche. He was born in 1844, in the middle of the 19th century. He was quite serious when he was little and was very good at schoolwork—though he had mixed feelings about the extremely strict school he went to. He argued a lot with his sister and mother, too. When Nietzsche was older he worked for a while as a teacher at a university, but he wasn’t a very good teacher and he was often unwell. So instead of teaching, he decided to travel. He spent a lot of time living in the mountains of Switzerland and grew an enormous moustache. He looked quite fierce but he was very polite and was often cracking jokes. He wrote a lot of books but at first hardly anyone was interested in them, and they sold only a few copies. After he died, however, Nietzsche’s books became very famous and lots and lots of people read them.
尼采认为，人们常常害怕做那些他们认为困难的事情——即使那些事情可能非常重要。他说，我们告诉自己，我们并不真正想要困难的事情，尽管我们内心深处想要。例如，想象有人暗自想要擅长数学，但他们发现这真的很难。他们可能会告诉自己，数学很蠢，只有愚蠢的人才会在乎擅长数学。他们这样告诉自己是为了隐藏自己的秘密野心。尼采会理解的。他的想法提醒我们，我们应该承认事情很难，但无论如何都要去做——要知道，我们越努力，事情就会变得越容易，而我们努力的最终会得到巨大的回报。
Nietzsche thought that people are often frightened of doing things that they find difficult—even though those things might be very important. He said that we tell ourselves that we do not really want the difficult things, even though secretly we do. For example, imagine someone who secretly wants to be very good at maths, but they find it really hard. They might tell themselves that maths is stupid and only stupid people care about being good at it. This is a story they tell themselves to hide their secret ambition. Nietzsche would have understood. His ideas remind us that we should admit that things are hard, but do them anyway—knowing that they will get easier the more we try, and that we will get a great reward at the end of our efforts.
大创意 #14
BIG IDEA #14
实力弱点理论
Weakness of Strength Theory
如果你想从纽约去巴黎，最简单、最快捷的方式当然是坐飞机。飞机有很多优点，使它非常适合长途旅行——比如巨大的机翼或强大的引擎。但是，如果你仔细想想，飞机几乎是放学回家或去商店最糟糕的交通方式。飞机适合长途飞行的那些优点，却也使它不适合在城镇中开车。道路太窄，无法容纳巨大的机翼，引擎可能会摧毁所有商店的窗户。肯定没有地方停车。这向我们表明，飞机长途飞行的优势也可能是短途旅行的弱点。
If you want to go from New York to Paris, the easiest and fastest way is, of course, to go by aeroplane. There are lots of things about an aeroplane that make it fantastic for travelling long distances—its huge wings, for example, or powerful engine. However, if you think about it, an aeroplane would be just about the worst possible way of trying to get home from school, or going to the shops. Exactly the same things that make a plane great for long distances would make it terrible for driving around in a town or city. The roads would be too narrow for its giant wings, and the engine would probably destroy all of the shop windows. There would certainly be nowhere to park. What this can show us is that the strengths of the plane for flying long distances can also be weaknesses when it comes to a short trip.
人与人之间其实也挺相似的。比如，一个人可能工作很出色。这意味着他们擅长快速完成困难的事情。他们也可能擅长告诉别人该做什么，也许他们很多时候都能仔细考虑钱的问题。这个人从不错过会议，而且会工作很多——可能工作到深夜或周末。但是，让他们工作出色的优势也是弱点。他们可能没有足够的时间玩耍或娱乐。他们总是查看手机，看看是否有关于工作的消息。他们可能会感到压力和担忧，因为他们必须确保每个小工作问题都得到迅速解决。所以，尽管这个人工作出色，但在家里和他在一起可能并不那么有趣。
It is actually quite similar with people. For instance, a person might be very good at work. That means they are good at getting difficult things done quickly. They’ll also probably be good at telling other people what to do, and maybe they are able to think carefully about money a lot of the time. That person will never miss a meeting and will work a lot—maybe late into the night or over the weekend. But the strengths that make them good at work are also weaknesses. They probably don’t have enough time to play or have fun. They are always checking their phone to see if there is a message about work. They might be stressed and worried because they have to make sure that every little work problem gets solved quickly. So this person, even though they’re good at doing their job, might not be a lot of fun to be around at home.
你可能认识一个非常有趣的女孩或男孩——他们会拿老师开玩笑，他们不在乎父母的想法，他们喜欢冒险，而且非常淘气。但是他们身上这些令人兴奋的东西也是弱点：他们很可能经常惹麻烦，而且因为他们太忙于淘气，所以在学校学不到多少东西。甚至可能恰恰相反——也许你也认识一个在学校非常细心、整洁、工作非常出色的人，但他们不太勇敢，不喜欢玩游戏或爬树。
You might know a girl or boy who is quite exciting—they make jokes about the teacher, they do not care what their parents think, they are adventurous and quite naughty. But these exciting things about them are also weaknesses: they most likely get into trouble a lot and because they’re so busy being naughty, they don’t learn much at school. It could even be the other way round—maybe you also know someone who is very careful and neat at school, and is very good at their work, but they’re not very brave, and don’t like playing games or climbing trees.
这里有一个重要的观点：优势也是劣势。你或他人拥有的每一个优势也总是一个弱点。你不可能擅长一件事而不擅长其他事情。也许你可以在自己身上看到这一点。也许你会因为在某些事情上不太擅长而对自己生气，但你知道你在其他领域确实有天赋。或者假设你擅长很多不同的事情——即使那也可能是一个弱点，因为当别人不能做你能做的事情时，你可能会不耐烦，很容易生气。总会有一些你擅长的事情会导致你在其他事情上不那么擅长。如果你想自己看看其中的联系，你可以玩个小游戏。写下一份你擅长的事情的清单，再写下另一份你不太擅长的事情的清单——然后看看这两份清单是如何关联的。
There is a big idea here: strengths are also weaknesses. Every strength you or someone else has, is always a weakness, too. You can’t be good at one thing without also being bad at something else. Maybe you can see this in yourself. Maybe you get annoyed with yourself for not being so good at some things, but you know you do have talent in other areas. Or suppose, even, that you are good at lots of different things—even that can be a weakness, as it might make you impatient and easily annoyed with other people when they can’t do what you can. There’s always some way in which the things you are good at make you less good at something else. If you want to see the link yourself, you can play a little game. Write down one list of what you’re good at, and write down another list of what you’re not so good at—then see how the two lists are related.
优点导致缺点这一观点也告诉你一些关于他人的事情。没有人是完美的。所有使某人优秀的因素也会使他们在其他方面不那么优秀。没有人能成为完美的父母、老师或朋友。这不是因为他们愚蠢或无用。而是因为他们就像那架飞机：在某些方面使他们变得优秀的因素意味着他们无法擅长其他事情。我们必须原谅别人的弱点，也要原谅自己的弱点。
The idea that strengths lead to weaknesses tells you something about other people as well. No one is ever going to be perfect. All the things that make someone good will also make them not-so-good in other ways. No one can be the perfect parent or teacher or friend. It’s not because they are stupid or useless. It’s because they are like that aeroplane: the things that make them great in some ways mean that there are other things they can’t be good at. We have to be forgiving of other people’s weaknesses, and be forgiving of our own.
优势与劣势
Strengths & Weaknesses
画一个如下图所示的表格，列出你的长处和短处。
完成后，想想这两个列表是如何关联的。
Draw a table like the one below and, make a list of your strengths and weaknesses.
Once you are done, think about how the two lists are related.
我擅长什么 What I’m Good At |
我不擅长什么 What I’m Not Good At |
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拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生的理念
An Idea From Ralph Waldo Emerson
拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生是一位美国哲学家。他出生于19世纪初，即 1803 年。爱默生在学校的成绩并不好，但后来他上了大学，成绩好了很多（很多人都是这种情况）。爱默生当了几年老师，一生大部分时间都住在波士顿附近——尽管他也游历广泛，在法国、英国和埃及待过一段时间。他是一位出色的公众演说家，在美国各地向众多听众发表过许多演讲。爱默生是一个非常善良温和的人，当时的总统亚伯拉罕·林肯非常钦佩他。爱默生在乡下买了一栋小房子，靠近一个美丽的小湖，他的朋友们常常在长假期间来拜访他。
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American philosopher. He was born near the start of the 19th century, in 1803. Emerson did not do very well at school, but later on he went to university and he did much better (this happens to quite a lot of people). Emerson worked as a school teacher for several years, and lived near Boston for most of his life—although he also travelled widely, spending time in France, England and Egypt. He was a great public speaker and gave many lectures to large audiences all over the United States. Emerson was a very kind and gentle man, and was much admired by the president at that time, Abraham Lincoln. Emerson bought a little house in the countryside, near a beautiful small lake, and his friends used to come for long holidays to visit him.
爱默生感兴趣的是，我们所欣赏的美好事物往往有缺点。例如，如果你非常聪明，你也可能感到孤独，因为别人不理解你。或者，如果你有很多钱，你很可能也会承担很多责任。如果你很有名，很多人都会羡慕你，你可能没有很多真正的朋友。爱默生不仅对人有这样的想法。猎豹是陆地上跑得最快的动物——它们的加速速度比赛车还快——但是，使它们如此快速的因素，比如轻盈和纤细，在其他方面也使它们变得脆弱。狮子比猎豹慢得多，但可以很容易地偷走猎豹的食物，因为它比猎豹大得多，强壮得多。爱默生甚至在非生物中看到了弱点即优势理论的例子。例如，一个非常美丽的城市，比如威尼斯或巴黎，可能会挤满游客，以至于实际上不太适合游览。通过审视这些优点和缺点，爱默生指出了一些令人悲伤但又非常重要的事情：没有什么是完美的。
Emerson was interested in how the good things we admire often have drawbacks. For instance, if you are very clever you will probably also be lonely because other people won’t understand you. Or, if you have a lot of money you will most likely also have a lot of responsibility. And if you are famous, many people will envy you and you might not have many true friends. Emerson didn’t only think this about people. Cheetahs are the fastest land animals—they can accelerate faster than a racing car—but the things that make them so quick, such as being light and thin, make them weak in other ways. A lion, which is much slower than a cheetah, can easily steal a cheetah’s food just because it is so much bigger and stronger. Emerson even saw examples of the weakness as strength theory in non-living things. For example, a city that is extremely beautiful, like Venice or Paris, might get so crowded with tourists that it’s actually not very nice to visit. By looking at these strengths and weaknesses, Emerson was pointing out something that is quite sad but also very important: nothing can ever be perfect.
伟大创意 #15
BIG IDEA #15
金继
Kintsugi
您可能以前没有听说过“ kintsugi ”这个词。这并不奇怪，因为大多数人都不会听说过——尽管他们可能听说过它的意思。Kintsugi 是一个日语单词，发音如下：kin-tsoo-gee。它由两个较小的日语单词组成：第一部分kin表示“金色”，第二部分tsugi表示“修复”。将这两个单词放在一起，意思是用一种漂亮的方式修复破损的东西。乍一听，这可能听起来很奇怪。通常，如果某样东西坏了，你会觉得它被毁了。你可能想把它扔掉，再买一个新的。但 kintsugi 不是这样。
You probably haven’t heard the word ‘kintsugi’ before. That’s not very surprising, as most people won’t have—though they might have heard about what it means. Kintsugi is a Japanese word, and you say it like this: kin-tsoo-gee. It’s made up of two smaller Japanese words: the first part, kin, means ‘golden’, and the second part, tsugi, means ‘fixing’. When you put the two together, it means repairing a broken thing in a beautiful way. This might sound like quite an odd idea, at first. Normally, if something gets broken, you feel like it has been ruined. You might want to throw whatever it is away and get a new one. But not with kintsugi.
金缮工艺起源于日本，由来已久。古代日本人喜爱花瓶和杯子，他们有制作精美花瓶和杯子的传统，但因为花瓶和杯子太精致，所以很容易破碎。大多数花瓶和杯子的主人会立即扔掉破碎的花瓶和杯子，然后去购买新的。但在 16 世纪中叶，有人想到，与其扔掉漂亮的花盆、杯子和碗，还不如试着修补它们。人们开始修补破碎的陶瓷，但他们没有用透明胶水将碎片粘在一起，而是开始将胶水与金粉混合。这意味着你可以看到非常清楚地标明花盆被修过的地方。这样做，他们并不是想假装杯子或花瓶从未被打碎过——而是明确表示它们已经修好了。他们表明他们并不介意，而且保留曾经被打碎的东西是可以的。
Kintsugi started a long time ago in Japan. The ancient Japanese people loved vases and cups, and they had a tradition of making very beautiful ones, but because they were so fine, they were delicate and they got broken easily. Most owners immediately threw away the broken ones and went out shopping for new ones. But, in the middle of the 16th century, someone had the idea that rather than just throwing away the beautiful pots, cups and bowls, they should try to fix them. People began to fix their broken ceramics, but instead of sticking the bits back together with clear glue, they started to mix the glue with gold dust. This meant you could see very clearly where a pot had been repaired. By doing this, they weren’t trying to pretend that the cup or vase had never been broken—they were making it very clear that it had been fixed. They were showing that they didn’t mind, and that it was OK to keep hold of something that had once been broken.
金缮是一个伟大的理念。它始于一件非常小的事——修补破损的杯子——但同样的想法也可以用来思考更重要的事情。不仅仅是杯子、碗、玩具或电视会破碎。实际上，最重要的东西是人。当人破碎时，这是一种有趣的破碎——不仅仅是骨头的物理断裂或身体的伤害。如果你非常生气，说了一些可怕的话，或者你做了一些卑鄙的事情，也会发生破碎。当这种情况发生时，你会觉得自己已经毁掉了自己原本美好和可爱的东西。也许你觉得别人不再需要你了。
Kintsugi is a big idea. It started from a very small thing—fixing a broken cup—but the same idea can be used for thinking about more important things as well. It is not just cups that can get broken, or bowls or toys or televisions. Actually, the most important things that can get broken are people. When people break it is a funny kind of breaking—it’s not just the physical breaking of bones or hurting your body. Breaking can also happen if you get very angry and say something horrible, or if you do something mean. When this happens, you feel as if you have spoiled what was nice and lovely about yourself. Maybe you feel like other people won’t want you anymore.
但你可以像修补金缮杯一样修补自己。当你对自己所做的事情感到抱歉，并向金缮杯道歉时，对你伤害过的人而言，这是一种修补。你在修复自己的感情。你不会忘记曾经发生过一件困难的事情，你也不会假装自己从未说过或做过那件事——而是在让事情变得更好，解决问题。
But you can mend yourself in the same way that the kintsugi cups are mended. When you feel sorry about what you did, and say sorry to the person you hurt, it is a kind of mending. You are repairing your feelings. You do not forget that a difficult thing has happened, and you are not pretending that you never said or did that thing—but you’re making it better and fixing the problem.
当你和某人和好后，你们的关系会比以前更好。和好之后，你可以确信争吵不会意味着友谊的结束，这会让友谊更加牢固。你也知道，你可以对父母生气，解释问题所在，并纠正它——这可以让你和父母的关系比以前更好。知道感情是可以修复的，这很有帮助。有时你忍不住伤害别人的感情，有时他们也忍不住伤害你的感情。这从来都不是好事。但如果你记住金缮的观念，你就不必太担心了。
When you make up with someone it can become better than it was before. After you have made up, you can feel sure that an argument will not mean the end of a friendship, and that makes the friendship much stronger. You know, too, that you can be angry with your parents and explain what the problem is and put it right—and that can make your relationship with your parents better than it was before. Knowing that feelings can be mended is very helpful. Sometimes you can’t help hurting other people’s feelings, and sometimes they cannot help hurting yours. That is never nice. But you don’t have to worry about it so much if you keep the idea of kintsugi in your mind.
还有哪些地方可以修补和改进？
What Other Things Could Be Mended and Improved?
在纸上列出除杯子和玻璃杯以外可以修理的东西的清单。例如：
On some paper, make a list of things — other than cups and glasses — that could be fixed. For example:
•使用彩色补丁修补你最喜欢的牛仔裤
• Using colourful patches to mend your favourite jeans
•通过道歉修复友谊（并且真心道歉）
• Fixing a friendship by apologising (and really meaning it)
•你自己——想想你摔倒或考试失败的所有时刻。这些都没有什么好尴尬的！它们帮助你学习，成就了现在的你。
• Yourself—think of all the times you’ve fallen over or failed a test. These aren’t anything to be embarrassed about! They help you learn and have made you who you are.
佛陀的教诲
An Idea From Buddha
大约两千五百年前，一位名叫悉达多·乔达摩的哲学家出生在尼泊尔（喜马拉雅山脉所在地）。他更广为人知的名字是佛陀或佛陀。你可能以前听说过他。佛陀是一位王子，他的家庭非常富裕。在他成长的过程中，他过着非常奢侈的生活——如果天气太晒，他甚至会让仆人为他撑起白伞，让他在阴凉处玩耍。但他并不快乐。世界上到处都有那么多的苦难。他注意到，就连昆虫也会被踩踏。
Around roughly two-and-a-half thousand years ago, a philosopher called Siddhartha Gautama was born in Nepal (where the Himalayas are). He is better known as Buddha or The Buddha. You have probably heard about him before. Buddha was a prince and his family was very wealthy. When he was growing up he had a very luxurious life—if it was too sunny, he even had servants to hold white umbrellas over him so he could play in the shade. But he wasn’t happy. There was so much suffering everywhere in the world. Even insects get trampled on, he noticed.
因此，佛陀长大后问了自己一个非常棘手的问题：如何才能停止痛苦？他有一个重要的想法，那就是我们应该接受事情永远不会完美。人们会误解我们，我们会犯错误，我们的朋友有时会很烦人或很刻薄，我们的计划不会成功，我们想踢足球时会下雨，我们会把热巧克力洒在裤子上，我们会在暑假的第一天感冒。我们不希望这些事情发生，但我们活在这个地球上，这些事情是不可避免的。佛陀鼓励我们接受这些事情，而不是被它们烦扰。如果我们总是希望事情完美，我们最终会非常沮丧，比我们应该的更悲伤。
So when he grew up, Buddha asked himself a very tricky question: how can you stop suffering? One big idea he had was that we should accept that things will never be perfect. People will misunderstand us, we will make mistakes, our friends will sometimes be annoying or mean, our plans won’t work out, it will rain when we want to play football, we’ll spill hot chocolate over our trousers, we’ll get a cold on the first day of the summer holidays. We do not want them to happen, but we are alive on this earth, and these sorts of things are unavoidable. Buddha encourages us to accept these things, rather than getting annoyed by them. If we always want things to be perfect we’ll end up being very frustrated and much more sad than we need to be.
佛陀喜欢修复物品，而不是直接扔掉它们。他认为，如果某样东西又旧又破，你不应该认为这是坏事。许多人都受到了佛陀思想的启发，他的一些追随者，尤其是在日本，对轻微损坏的物品实际上也可以非常美丽非常感兴趣——就像泰迪熊或毛绒玩具在你变老、被人喜爱并且失去了一些毛时，会变得对你更重要。
Buddha loved the idea of repairing things instead of just throwing them away. He thought that if something was old and worn and broken, you shouldn’t see that as a bad thing. Many people were inspired by Buddha’s ideas, and some of his followers, particularly in Japan, got very interested in how slightly damaged things can actually be very beautiful—just like a teddy or soft toy can become much more important to you when it’s old and loved, and has lost some of its fur.
伟大创意 #16
BIG IDEA #16
需要教导而不是唠叨
The Need to Teach Rather Than Nag
被人唠叨可不是什么好事。有人会一直告诉你做某件事；他们一直问你，“你做完了吗？”他们问得越多，你就越不想做。有时你也会唠叨。你可能会唠叨你的父母养一只狗，或者带你去电影院看你真正想看的电影。你可以每天（或每天十次）问他们，但他们似乎从来没有答应过。虽然很多人都会唠叨，但有趣的是，它的效果并不好。即使有人最终答应了，他们也会觉得自己被折磨得筋疲力尽，被迫做了一些他们实际上并不想做的事情。没有人真的喜欢唠叨，也没有人真的喜欢被人唠叨。
It is not very nice being nagged. Someone will keep on telling you to do something; they keep on asking you, ‘Have you done it yet?’ and the more they ask the more you don’t want to do it. Sometimes you might nag too. You might nag your parents to get a dog or to take you to the cinema to see a film you really want to see. You could ask them every day (or ten times a day) and they never seem to say yes. Although lots of people nag, the funny thing is that it does not work very well. Even if someone says yes eventually, they feel like they have been worn down and forced into something they do not actually want to do. No one really likes nagging, and no one really likes being nagged.
那么人们为什么会唠叨呢？基本上，唠叨者是想让某人做某事。他们试图说服另一个人。如果你唠叨，那是因为你真的希望某事发生——你心里有一个想法谈论某件事有多重要，或者某件事有多好，你希望对方也同意。你希望他们理解你所理解的。
So why do people nag? Basically, the nagger is trying to get someone to do something. They are trying to persuade another person. If you nag, it’s because you really want something to happen—you have an idea in your head about how important something is or how nice something could be, and you want the other person to agree. You want them to understand what you understand.
问题是，唠叨并不是让任何人理解任何事情的好方法。唠叨就像非常糟糕的教学。想象一下，你不明白如何做一种新的数学加法。一个非常糟糕的老师可能会不停地说，“你为什么不直接做呢？”他们不是在解释。他们根本没有真正教你。他们只是在唠叨。
The problem is that nagging isn’t a very good way of getting anyone to understand anything. Nagging is like very bad teaching. Imagine you did not understand how to do a new kind of sum in maths. A very bad teacher might keep on saying, ‘Why don’t you just do it?’ They’re not explaining. They’re not really teaching you at all. They are just nagging.
这里的核心思想是，当人们不做别人想做的事情时，通常是因为他们没有正确理解为什么这很重要。唠叨的人知道某件事很重要——但他们没有解释为什么这是一个好主意，所以没人理解，也没人去做。如果你唠叨、纠缠或不停地谈论某件事，你真正想做的（但实际上并没有做的）是告诉别人你的想法和感受。
The big idea here is that when people do not do what others want it is usually because they don’t understand properly why it is important. The nagger knows something is important—but they’re not explaining why it is a good idea, so no one understands, and no one does it. If you nag or pester or keep on about something, what you are really trying to do (but are not actually doing) is teach someone about what you think and feel.
想到自己可以成为老师，你可能会感到有点惊讶。通常，你可能会认为老师是年纪较长、专门教书的人。但实际上，教学是每个人有时都需要做的事情。只要你帮助别人理解某件事，你就是一名老师——但这可能有点棘手，因为成年人通常不会花太多时间教你如何成为一名老师。
It can be a bit of a surprise to think that you could be the teacher. Usually you might think of a teacher as someone older who has a special job teaching people. But really, teaching is something that everyone needs to do sometimes. You are a teacher whenever you help someone else understand something—but it might be tricky because adults have not usually spent much time teaching you how to be a teacher.
想想你曾经遇到过的最好的老师。他们做了什么事情让你如此优秀？也许他们非常善于倾听你——他们不只是告诉你事情，而是听取你的意见。或者他们问你很多问题，这意味着他们试图找出你不明白的原因。也许这位好老师也非常有耐心——如果你不明白某件事，他们不会告诉你保持安静，否则就说你很笨。他们可能也很热情，并且非常乐意与你分享想法。或者也许最重要的是他们没有让你因为不知道某件事而感到难过。一个好的老师会记住，除非有人教你，否则你无法知道一件事——所以如果你不知道某件事，那不是因为你笨，而是因为还没有人是一个足够好的老师。
Think about the best teacher you have ever had. What did they do that was so good? Maybe they were very good at listening to you—they didn’t just tell you things, but heard what you had to say. Or maybe they asked you a lot of questions, which means they were trying to find out why you didn’t understand something. Probably this good teacher was also very patient—if you didn’t understand something, they would not tell you to be quiet or say you were stupid. They were probably enthusiastic, too, and were really excited about sharing ideas with you. Or perhaps the most important thing was that they didn’t make you feel bad for not knowing something already. A good teacher remembers that you cannot know a thing until someone teaches you it—so if you don’t know something, it’s not because you are stupid, it’s because no one has been a good enough teacher yet.
所以，你可能已经对好的教学方法了解很多了，因为你曾经遇到过一位好老师。你也可以通过向他们学习，学习如何成为一名更好的老师。请记住，如果有人唠叨你，那只是有人想教你一些东西——还要记住，如果你想向某人解释某事，最好是教而不是唠叨。
So, you probably already know quite a lot about good teaching, because at some point you’ve had a good teacher. You can learn how to be a better teacher, too, by learning from them. Remember that if you are being nagged, someone is just trying to teach you something—and remember, too, that if you want to explain something to someone, it’s better to teach than to nag.
唠叨与教导
Nagging vs Teaching
你还能想到哪些可以从唠叨变成教导的事情？看看下面的例子，然后写一些你自己的例子。
What other things can you think of that might be changed from nagging to teaching? Look at the examples below and then write some of your own.
唠叨的例子Examples of Nagging |
教学范例Examples of Teaching |
“去整理一下你的房间！” “Go and tidy your room!” |
“整理你的房间可以让你更容易地找到你的东西。” “Tidying your room will make it easier for you to find your things.” |
“快点，你要迟到了！” “Hurry up, you’re going to be late!” |
“准时表明我们珍惜将要见到的人或事。” “Being on time shows that we appreciate the people or things we’re going to see.” |
“你真是让人厌烦。” “You’re being a pain.” |
“你认为你为什么会这样做？” “Why do you think you’re acting like this?” |
伊曼纽尔康德的观点
An Idea From Immanuel Kant
18世纪，德国有一位哲学家，名叫伊曼纽尔·康德。他长相很奇怪——身材矮小，有点驼背。他家境贫寒，但他学习很好，在大学里找到了一份工作，是一名很受欢迎的老师。他参加的聚会太多了，朋友们都担心他没有时间写书，但他每天早上起得很早（早上五点），然后就开始写作。他非常爱干净，喜欢给自己的生活制定一些小规则。他总是在下午四点整出去散步，他有一个规则，就是晚饭后吃蛋糕或冰淇淋时必须讲笑话。康德喜欢在晴朗的夜晚仰望星空：这让他想起自己很渺小，而宇宙却很大。
In the 18th century there was a philosopher who lived in Germany called Immanuel Kant. He looked quite odd—he was very small and a bit of a hunchback. His family were extremely poor, but he was good at learning and got a job in a university, where he was a very popular teacher. He went to so many parties that his friends worried he wouldn’t have time for writing books, but he got up really early in the morning (at five a.m.) and did his writing then. He was very neat and tidy and loved making little rules for his life. He always went for a walk at exactly four o’clock in the afternoon and he had a rule that he had to tell jokes when he was eating a cake or ice cream at the end of dinner. Kant loved gazing up at the stars on clear, dark nights: it reminded him that he was very small and the universe is huge.
康德讨厌人们互相指挥。他认为最重要的是要明白为什么你必须做某事——你不应该只因为别人告诉你做某事，而应该因为你亲眼看到这是件好事。所以，如果我们想让别人做某事，我们必须正确地解释我们想要什么。我们必须让他们自己明白为什么这是一个好主意。康德认为，如果某件事真的是一个好主意，那么其他人就能理解为什么它值得去做。如果你教他们，你就不必强迫他们。
Kant hated it when people ordered each other about. He thought that the most important thing was to understand why you have to do something—you should not do something just because someone has told you to, but because you see for yourself that it’s a good thing to do. So, if we want to get other people to do things, we have to explain properly what we want. We have to get them to see for themselves why it is such a good idea. Kant thought that if something really was a good idea, then other people would be able to understand why it’s worth doing it. If you teach them, you won’t have to force them.
伟大创意 #17
BIG IDEA #17
身心问题
The Mind-Body Problem
别人对你的看法很大程度上取决于你的外表。这是一个很奇怪、有时很难思考的问题——但讨论它也是很重要的。
How other people think about you depends a lot on how you look. This is quite a strange and sometimes difficult thing to think about—but it’s also very important to discuss.
如果你看起来可爱又天真，其他人（尤其是成年人）可能会认为你是一个非常善良、举止得体的人。这可能实际上与你的内心感受没有太大关系，但他们不知道这一点。如果你看起来邋遢又疯狂，那么其他人可能也会认为你是这样的，尽管你可能真的非常小心和体贴。
If you happen to look cute and innocent, other people (and especially adults) probably think that you are a very nice and well-behaved person. That might not actually have very much to do with how you feel inside, but they don’t know that. If you look messy and crazy, that’s probably what other people think you are like, even though you might really be quite careful and thoughtful.
如果这听起来不太好，那么值得记住的是，有时你对其他人的想法可能也是相同的。如果你不太了解某人，你可能会从他们的外表猜测他们是什么样的人。当你遇到一个陌生人时，你所能做的就是看他们的外表——你根本不知道他们脑子里在想什么。
If that doesn’t sound very nice, it’s worth remembering that you probably think the same things about other people sometimes. If you don’t know someone very well, you probably guess what they are like as a person from their appearance. All you have to go on when meeting someone new is what they look like—you do not know anything about what’s going on inside their heads.
但对于你来说，情况就不同了。你了解自己，也知道你的外表并不能很好地反映出你是什么样的人。也许你并不完全是你想要的样子。也许你觉得自己太高或太矮，或者你希望你的鼻子、头发或耳朵有所不同；你可能会担心自己太胖或太瘦，或者你看起来不像其他人。在所有这些不同的担忧背后都有一个主要的想法：其他人会对我产生误解——他们看不到真正的我，他们只会看到我的外表。
When it comes to you, though, it’s different. You know yourself, and you know that how you look isn’t really a very good guide to what you are like. Maybe you don’t look exactly the way you would like to. Maybe you think you are too tall or too short, or you wish your nose was different or your hair or your ears; you might worry that you are too chubby or too skinny, or that you don’t look enough like other people. Behind all these very different worries is one main thought: other people will get the wrong idea of me—they will not see who I really am, they will just see what I look like.
如果你仔细地照镜子，想象一下如果别人只关注你的外表，他们会怎么想你，这可能会很奇怪。想象一下有人试图猜测你是什么样子。他们可能会猜对一两件事，但他们很多时候都是错的。你的外表和你的内心有着非常重要的区别。
If you look very carefully at yourself in the mirror and imagine what other people might think about you if they only paid attention to what you look like, it can be quite strange. Imagine someone was trying to guess what you are like. They’d maybe get one or two things right, but they’d be wrong in lots of ways. There’s a very important difference between how you look on the outside and how you really are on the inside.
尝试换一种方式梳头，或者在镜子里做出不同的表情。这些变化实际上并没有改变你——你还是你以前那个你，但你的表情会向人们传达不同的信息。令人惊讶的是，你只需改变你的外表就能改变人们对你的看法，即使你实际上根本没有改变。
Try brushing your hair a different way or making a different expression in the mirror. These changes don’t actually change you at all—you are still exactly the same person you have always been, but the way your face looks will be sending a different message to people. It’s amazing how you can change what people think of you just by altering your look, even though you haven’t really changed at all.
但无论你如何改变发型、选择不同的衣服、微笑或皱眉，有一件事是肯定的：别人无法仅凭外表就知道你到底是谁。这并不是因为别人很笨——而是因为一个人的内心总是很难被了解。
But however much you change your hair or pick different clothes or smile or frown, one thing remains pretty certain: other people won’t be able to know who you really are just by looking at you. This isn’t because other people are stupid—it is because what someone is like inside is always quite hard to get to know.
有时对此感到难过是正常的。你无法选择自己的外表，但其他人却根据你的外表来评判你。他们看到你的头发、鼻子或腿，并根据这些来判断你是谁。这就是为什么人们担心自己的外表是正常的——因为他们（悲伤地）知道其他人会根据外表来评判他们。这不太公平，但这种情况一直在发生。有趣的是，这种情况发生在每个人身上。每个人都被抛弃在他们无法选择的身体里。我们没有选择自己的外表；但我们一直在评判别人，好像他们是谁是由他们的外表决定的。
It is OK to feel a bit sad about this sometimes. You did not choose the way you look, but other people judge you by your appearance. They see your hair or your nose or your legs and decide who you are just on that. That’s why it’s normal for people to worry about how they look—because they know (sadly) that other people will judge them by it. It is not very fair, but it happens all the time. The funny thing is that this happens to everyone. Everyone has been dumped in a body they did not choose. We didn’t choose how we look; yet we keep judging others as if who they are is determined by what they look like.
我们可以更友善地对待他人，只要记住，人们的内心可能与外表大不相同。一个看起来很聪明、很无趣的人也可能很友好、很有趣；一个年纪很大、行动迟缓的人可能还记得小时候的情形；一个说话方式滑稽的人可能会说一些非常重要的话；长得非常漂亮的人可能会暗自感到悲伤和丑陋；看起来非常成功的人可能实际上觉得自己很失败。你无法仅通过观察来判断。但有一件事你确实知道：他们都和你一样，因为他们的内在和外表都不同。
We can be nicer to others by remembering that inside, people might be very different from the way they look. Someone who looks very smart and boring might also be friendly and funny; someone who is very old and slow might remember exactly what it’s like to be a child; someone who speaks in a funny way might have some very important things to say; someone who is really pretty might secretly feel sad and ugly; someone who looks very successful might actually feel like a failure. You can’t tell just by looking at them. There’s one thing that you do know, though: they’re all like you, because they’re all different on the inside from the way they happen to look on the outside.
让·保罗·萨特的观点
An Idea From Jean-Paul Sartre
法国哲学家让-保罗·萨特出生于 1905 年，即20世纪初。他在学校里过得并不开心，经常被欺负，但后来考上了大学，成绩很好。他的耳朵异常大，右眼看起来总是盯着角落，而且他很淘气，喜欢捉弄别人。大学毕业后，萨特当了几年老师，主要住在巴黎。他喜欢去咖啡馆，喜欢吃蛋糕和糕点。他最终变得非常出名——1980 年他去世时，有五万人参加了他的葬礼。
French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was born in 1905, at the beginning of the 20th century. He was unhappy at school, where he got bullied a lot, but went to university and did very well there. He had unusually large ears and his right eye always looked as if it was staring into the corner, and he was also quite naughty and loved playing tricks on people. After university, Sartre became a schoolteacher for a few years and mainly lived in Paris. He liked going to cafés, and loved eating cakes and pastries. He eventually became extremely famous—when he died in 1980, fifty thousand people went to his funeral.
萨特对生命中所有奇特的事情非常感兴趣。其中一件奇特的事情就是，我们可以用两种截然不同的方式来体验自己：一种是“为自己”的方式，一种是“为他人”的方式。在我们自己的头脑中，我们有记忆、计划、想法、希望和许多复杂的感觉。但对其他人来说，我们可能只是一个戴着眼镜在路上上学的人。萨特担心我们可能会失去与自己头脑中所有有趣事物的联系，开始以别人看待我们的方式来思考自己。我们可能会过于关注别人对我们的看法。
Sartre was very interested in all the odd things about being alive. One of those odd things is that we can experience ourselves in two very different ways: there’s the way we are ‘for ourselves’ and the way we are ‘for others’. In our own heads we have memories, plans, ideas and hopes and lots of complicated feelings. But for other people, we might just be someone with glasses who goes to the school down the road. Sartre was worried that we might lose touch with all the interesting things in our own heads and start to think of ourselves just in the way other people see us. We might pay too much attention to what other people think of us.
我们这样做不是为了变得可怕，但我们常常忘记，其他人比他们的外表有趣得多。你可能认为你的老师只是一名老师，发型有点奇怪，鞋子也很糟糕，但他们内心却与众不同。他们记得自己五岁时玩捉迷藏，十二岁时擅长体操。他们喜欢游泳，喜欢和朋友一起出去吃饭，他们梦想着去冰岛爬山，学骑摩托车或跳舞。
We don’t do it to be horrible, but we often forget that other people are much more interesting than the way they look. You might see your teacher as just a teacher, with a bit of a funny haircut and bad shoes, but inside themselves they’re different. They remember being five and playing hide-and-seek, and being twelve and good at gymnastics. They love swimming and going out to dinner with their friends and they dream about climbing mountains in Iceland, learning to ride a motorbike or to dance.
尝试像萨特一样思考非常重要，并且记住你不能只通过观察一个人就知道他到底是什么样的人——你必须先了解他。
It’s very important that we try to think like Sartre, and remember that you can’t know what someone is really like just by looking at them—you have to get to know them first.
大创意 #18
BIG IDEA #18
为什么你会感到孤独
Why You Feel Lonely
你有没有感到孤独？你可能时不时会感到孤独。每个人都会时不时感到孤独，即使身边有朋友和家人——这并不意味着你很奇怪。
Do you ever feel lonely? You probably do, from time to time. Everyone feels lonely sometimes, even if they have friends and family around them—it doesn’t mean you’re weird.
这是孤独感最令人困惑的事情之一——孤独感不仅仅发生在周围没有其他人的时候。事实上，大多数时候，当似乎没有人理解我们时，我们才会感到孤独。这就是为什么孤独感会让你怀疑自己是不是出了什么问题。也许班上的其他孩子对你并不真正感兴趣的事情感到兴奋。也许你真的很喜欢研究昆虫或希腊神话和传说（例如），但这些东西似乎没有引起其他人的兴趣。它会让你感到孤独。你最终会觉得自己有点奇怪，没有人理解你。
That’s one of the most puzzling things about feeling lonely—it doesn’t just happen when there are no other people around. In fact, most of the time we feel lonely when no one else seems to understand us. That’s why feeling lonely can make you wonder if there’s something wrong with you. Maybe other kids in your class get excited by things that you’re not really interested in. Perhaps you really like studying insects or Greek myths and legends (for example), but these things do not seem to interest anyone else. It can make you feel lonely. You can end up feeling that you are a bit odd and that no one understands you.
不过，你并不奇怪，你也不是那么难以理解。只是你周围只有极少数人：你班上的二三十个孩子，以及你亲近的少数人。这么小的群体让你很难找到完全了解你的人。但幸运的是，世界上有这么多人，可能有很多非常好的人和你有共同的兴趣，他们愿意和你谈论他们，加入你的行列。想象一下，一百个人中只有一个人能真正理解你。这听起来不多，但在一个拥有一百万人口的城市里，这意味着一万人——在一个拥有六千万人口的国家里，这意味着六十万！
You are not strange, though, and you are not really all that difficult to understand. It’s just that you are surrounded by a very small selection of people: the twenty or thirty children who happen to be in your class, and the handful of people who happen to be in your close family. Such a small group of people does not give you much of a chance of finding someone who totally gets you. But luckily, there are so many people in the world that there are likely to be lots of extremely nice people who do share your interests and who would love to talk to you about them and join in. Imagine that just one person out of a hundred will be able to really understand you. That doesn’t sound like much, but in a city of a million people that means ten thousand—and in a country of sixty million, it means six hundred thousand!
因此，与其说“没有人理解我”，不如说“现在身边没有人理解我”。这两种感觉之间有着很大且非常重要的区别。即使你在学校和少数人在一起，他们可能和你兴趣不大，你就会知道问题并不在于你。问题在于学校和家庭太小了——与世界上有多少有趣的人相比。
So instead of saying ‘No one understands me,’ you could say, ‘No one who is around right now understands me.’ There’s a big and very important difference between those two feelings. Even though you are at school with quite a small number of people, who might not exactly share your interests, you can know that it’s not really you who is the problem. The problem is that schools and families are so small—in comparison to how many interesting people there are in the world.
不过别担心——你不必永远等待着结识和你一样爱好的新朋友。还有一件重要的事情要记住：虽然其他人现在似乎没有和你分享兴趣，但也许他们会。也许你班上还有其他孩子喜欢谈论昆虫或希腊神话，但他们对此保持沉默，因为他们认为其他人不会感兴趣。或者，也许他们想了解这些，但他们还没有机会正确理解这些科目有多有趣。
Don’t worry though—you don’t have to wait forever to meet new friends who like what you like. There’s another important thing to remember: although other people do not seem to share your interests now, perhaps they could. Maybe there are other children in your class who would love to talk insects or Greek myths, but they keep quiet about it because they don’t think anyone else would be interested. Or, maybe they would like to learn about it, but they haven’t had the chance to properly understand how interesting those subjects are yet.
有时你可能会觉得自己是唯一一个感到孤独的人，但请记住，事实并非如此。几乎每个人都会感到有点孤独，即使是成年人：他们只是不提，有时是因为他们不好意思承认。不过，这没什么可羞耻的。每个人都在寻找能理解他们的人，这样他们就不会感到孤独。我们需要提醒自己，外面有我们可以亲近的人。我们可能还没有找到我们现在需要的那种人，但他们会在那里，我们会找到他们——尤其是如果我们敢于承认（首先对自己）我们很孤独的话。
You might feel like you’re the only one who feels lonely sometimes, but remember that this isn’t actually true. Almost everyone feels a bit lonely, even adults: they just do not mention it, sometimes because they are embarrassed to admit it. There’s nothing to be ashamed about though. Everyone is looking for people to understand them, so that they don’t feel lonely. We need to remind ourselves that there are people out there that we can feel close to. We might not have found the kind of people we need right now, but they will be out there, and we will find them—especially if we can dare to admit (to ourselves at first) that we are lonely.
为什么你会感到孤独
Why You Feel Lonely
找一支笔和一些纸，列出一些你可能会感到孤独的事情。了解你感到孤独的地方是友谊的开始，因为好朋友彼此了解别人所不了解的事情。
Find a pen and some paper and list some of the things you might feel lonely about. Knowing where you feel lonely is the beginning of friendship, because good friends get things about one another that no one else does.
蒙田的理念
An Idea From Michel de Montaigne
有史以来最善良的人之一是一位名叫米歇尔·德·蒙田的法国哲学家。他出生于近五百年前的 1533 年。蒙田来自一个相当富裕的家庭——他们甚至拥有一座小城堡——有一段时间他在政界有一份好工作。不过，他大部分时间都喜欢呆在城堡塔楼里一个摆满书籍的特殊房间里。他非常喜欢当地人，尽管他们没有他那么有文化。他觉得种菜或打扫房子可以让你学到与读书一样多甚至更多的人生道理。他留着小胡子和络腮胡，很年轻就秃顶了。
One of the nicest people who ever lived was a French philosopher called Michel de Montaigne. He was born nearly five hundred years ago, in 1533. Montaigne came from quite a rich family—they even owned a little castle—and for a while he had a good job in politics. Mostly, though, he liked spending time in a special room filled with books, in a tower in his castle. He was very fond of the local people, even though they weren’t as well educated as him. He felt that growing vegetables or cleaning a house could teach you as much—or more—about life as reading books. He had a little moustache and a beard, and went bald quite young.
蒙田有时会感到孤独。他不喜欢住在附近的其他富裕人士喜欢的东西。然而，他经常旅行，通过旅行，他能够看到不同国家的情况。在一个地方看起来很普通的衣服在其他地方看起来很奇怪。人们吃的东西会因你所在的地方而有很大变化。蒙田意识到，我们之所以感到奇怪，是因为我们恰好不能适应我们周围的环境——尽管我们可能在其他地方适应得很好。
Sometimes Montaigne was lonely. He did not like the same things as other well-off people who lived nearby. However, he travelled quite a lot, and by travelling he was able to see how different countries are. Clothes that seem ordinary in one place look very strange somewhere else. The things people eat change a lot depending on where you are. We feel odd, Montaigne realised, because we just don’t happen to fit in with what’s immediately around us—though we might fit in fine somewhere else.
然后蒙田做了一件非常有趣的事情——他写了一本书，讲述做他自己是什么样的。他写了所有他喜欢的和让他感兴趣的东西。他是有史以来第一个这样做的人。令他大吃一惊的是，他发现很多人真的喜欢它。当然不是每个人——也许只有一百个人喜欢。但在整个国家，有这么多人。也许他的隔壁邻居不感兴趣，也许住在村子里的人不在乎，但他发现了一件非常重要的事情：很多人能理解你，只是你可能还不知道他们是谁。
Then Montaigne did a very interesting thing—he wrote a book about what it was like to be him. He wrote about all the things he liked and that interested him. He was the first person ever to do this. To his great surprise he found that a lot of people really did like it. Not everyone of course—maybe just one person out of a hundred. But in a whole country, that was a lot of people. Maybe his next-door neighbour wasn’t interested, maybe the people who lived in the village didn’t care, but he’d discovered something very important: lots of people can understand you, you just might not know who they are yet.
大创意 #19
BIG IDEA #19
生命的意义
The Meaning of Life
“生命的意义是什么？”这个问题听起来很严肃。人们有时会认为这是一个有点疯狂的问题，或者想象答案一定非常复杂。其实这是一个非常重要的问题，答案并不难理解。
Asking ‘What is the meaning of life?’ sounds serious. People sometimes think it’s a slightly mad question, or imagine that the answer must be very complicated. Actually it’s a very important question and the answer isn’t too hard to understand.
生命的意义在于什么让你的生活变得有趣和美好。就这么简单。而要实现这一点，最重要的是解决问题。当你解决问题时，你解决了一个对你来说很重要的问题。你用你的智慧和技能把事情做好，不再让它困扰或惹恼你。即使是以很小的方式做到这一点也很有好处。例如，也许你的房间很乱，你可以通过整理来解决这个问题——整理好之后感觉很棒。或者也许你和妈妈吵了一架，你可以通过拥抱她来解决这个问题。让生活变得糟糕的是问题，所以解决问题是我们必须做的事情，让生活变得更好，赋予它意义，这是很有道理的。
The meaning of life is about what makes your life feel interesting and good. It’s as simple as that. And to achieve this, what mainly counts is fixing things. When you fix something, you solve a problem that matters to you. You use your intelligence and skill to put something right, to stop it bothering or annoying you. It’s nice doing this even in quite small ways. For example, maybe your room is messy and you fix it by tidying it up—it feels lovely when it’s done. Or maybe you’ve had an argument with your mum and you fix it by giving her a hug. What makes life bad is problems, so it makes a lot of sense that fixing problems is the thing we have to do to make life good and give it meaning.
然而，这并不总是像整理房间或给某人一个拥抱那么简单。问题有大有小。大问题是既对你也有别人不利的事情。要想知道你能做些什么来让你的一生变得有意义，你可以找出一个你想要解决（或帮助解决，因为你不必亲自动手）的大问题。奇怪的是，问题现在有多大或多严重并不重要。它可能是这样的问题：“为什么城市不能更美好？”或“人们怎样才能少争吵？”或“为什么不是每个人都能开些有趣的玩笑？”或“为什么不是每个人都能有一份好工作？”或者你可以从一些让你烦恼的事情开始——也许是人们在街上留下太多垃圾，或者你的朋友花太多时间在手机上而不是和你聊天。这些事情很烦人，但它们不仅仅是烦人——它们是需要解决的问题。你的烦恼让你注意到世界上有些不太好的事情——有些事情是可以解决的。世界上有很多问题需要解决。
It is not always quite so simple as tidying your room or giving someone a hug though. There are big problems as well as little ones. A big problem is something that’s bad for other people as well as for you. To get an idea of what you could do to make your whole life meaningful, you can pick out a big problem that you want to fix (or to help fix, because you don’t have to do it all yourself). Weirdly, it does not matter how big or serious the problem feels right now. It could be a question like ‘Why can’t cities be nicer?’ or ‘How can people argue less?’ or ‘Why can’t everyone make funny jokes?’ or ‘Why can’t everyone have a nice job?’ Or you can just start with something that bothers you—maybe that people leave too much rubbish on the streets, or that your friends spend too much time on their phones instead of talking to you. These things are annoying, but they’re more than that—they are problems that need fixing. Your annoyance is getting you to notice something that’s not very nice in the world—something that could be fixed. There are lots of problems in the world that need fixing.
你可能还不知道如何解决你的问题（尽管你可能有一些有趣的想法），但这并不重要。你越早问自己哪些大问题需要解决（以及你希望帮助解决哪些问题）越好。在你的生活中尽早考虑这个问题是件好事，因为它让你知道你可以学习哪些技能来帮助你。有时学校感觉不太有意义，因为你会想，“我需要学这个干什么？”当你觉得你需要学习一些东西，因为它会帮助你解决一个重要的问题时，教育就会变得非常令人兴奋。
You probably won’t know how to fix your problem yet (though you might have some interesting ideas), but that does not matter. The earlier you ask yourself about which big problems need fixing (and which you’d like to help fix) the better. It’s good to think about this early on in your life, because it gives you an idea of the kinds of skills you could learn that will help you. Sometimes school doesn’t feel very meaningful because you think, ‘What do I need to learn this for?’ Education becomes very exciting when you feel like you need to learn something because it’ll help you fix an important problem.
也许你无法完全解决一个大问题。这也无所谓。关键是你正在努力，并且正在帮助解决问题，即使只是一点点。如果你正在努力做一些好事，你的生活就会变得有趣，而这种有意义的感觉取决于你正在努力做的事情，而不仅仅是你设法完成了什么。想象一下你在拼拼图，你可以更好地理解这种感觉。可能有一块你一时不知道该放在哪里。这真的会让你很沮丧，但你努力了，最终找到了正确的位置。它与周围的其他碎片完美契合，终于把它放在那里感觉很棒。你还没有完成整个拼图，但你觉得自己正在取得进展。
Maybe you will not manage to completely fix a big problem. That doesn’t matter either. The point is that you’re trying, and that you’re helping to fix the problem even if it’s just a little bit. Your life feels interesting if you are trying to do something good, and that meaningful feeling depends on what you’re trying to do—not just what you manage to complete. You can understand this feeling a bit better by imagining that you are doing a jigsaw. There might be a piece that you can’t figure out where to put for a while. It will really frustrate you, but you try and eventually you find the right place. It fits perfectly with the other pieces around it, and it feels great to have finally put it there. You’ve still not finished the whole puzzle, but you feel like you’re making progress.
所以，生命的意义并不是什么了不起或可怕的事情。它只是一种感觉，即你在解决你最感兴趣的问题上取得了进展——即使你还没有把所有问题都理清。
So, the meaning of life is not something big or scary. It’s just the feeling that you are making progress in solving the problems that most interest you—even if you haven’t got it all sorted out just yet.
有趣问题列表
A List of Interesting Problems
在纸上列出你认为特别有趣的待解决的问题。例如：
On some paper, make a list of problems that you think are particularly interesting to solve. For example:
我们如何才能使城市变得更加宜居？
How can we make cities nicer to live in?
为什么有些人彼此之间很刻薄？
Why are some people mean to each other?
怎样才是过上幸福生活的最好方式？
What is the best way to live a happy life?
亚里士多德的观点
An Idea From Aristotle
有一位哲学家，他经常思考如何让生活变得有趣和满足，他就是亚里士多德。他生活在古希腊，但年纪太小，未能与苏格拉底相识（我们在第 18 页见过他）。亚里士多德的一项工作非常有趣。他是一位名叫亚历山大的年轻王子的老师。亚历山大很快就成为国王，他率领军队征服了当时几乎所有最重要的国家。他非常成功，被称为亚历山大大帝。你可以想象，对于一位老师来说，看到自己教过的人征服世界一定是一次非常奇怪的经历。
One philosopher who thought a lot about what makes life feel interesting and satisfying was a man called Aristotle. He lived in Ancient Greece, but was too young to meet Socrates (who we met earlier on page 18). One of Aristotle’s jobs was very interesting. He was the teacher of a young prince called Alexander. Alexander soon became king, and he led his army to conquer practically all the most important countries at that time. He was so successful that he became known as Alexander the Great. As you can imagine, it must have been a pretty odd experience for a teacher to see someone they taught go on and conquer the world.
亚里士多德对一切都感兴趣。他生活的时代，人们的知识并不丰富，他开始研究各种各样的事情——比如树是如何生长的，风为什么吹，什么样的政府最好，为什么有些人比其他人更幸福，蠕虫是如何诞生的，如何说服人们，以及思维是如何运作的。
Aristotle was interested in everything. He lived at a time when people did not know much and he set out to find out all sorts of things—like how trees grow, why the wind blows, what’s the best kind of government to have, why some people are happier than others, how worms are born, how to persuade people and how thinking works.
他的一个重要思想是关于技能的。我们习惯于技能的概念——我们知道你可以熟练地洗牌（如果你练习很多）或说阿拉伯语（如果这不是你的常用语言）。然而，亚里士多德认为很多东西都是技能。他认为开玩笑、保持冷静、善良和明智地理财也都是技能。他是对的。人们不是生来就知道如何做这些事情——他们是学习的。每个人都可以学会擅长这些事情，只是正常的学校教育通常不专注于教授它们。
One of his big ideas was about skills. We’re used to the idea of skill—we know that you can become skilled at shuffling cards (if you practise a lot) or at speaking Arabic (if it is not your usual language). However, Aristotle thought a lot more things were skills. He thought that things like making jokes, keeping calm, being kind and being sensible with money were all skills, too. He was right. People are not born knowing how to do these—they learn. Everyone can learn to be good at these things, it is just that normal school education does not usually concentrate on teaching them.
亚里士多德还认为，我们最享受的事情之一就是利用技能来实现对我们来说很重要的事情。我们喜欢完成那些一开始感觉很困难的事情，但如果我们学会了如何做，我们就能处理好。当我们这样做时，我们会觉得我们的能力和智慧得到了充分的利用。亚里士多德认为幸福就是觉得生活是有意义的，而这可以通过拥有一个重要的目标并积极努力去实现。
Aristotle also thought that one of the things we most enjoy is using skill to achieve something that is important to us. We like accomplishing things that feel difficult at first, but which we can deal with if we learn how. When we do this, we feel like our abilities and intelligence are being properly used. Aristotle thought that happiness was about feeling that life is meaningful, and that this was achieved by having an important goal and actively working towards it.
伟大创意 #20
BIG IDEA #20
为什么我们讨厌廉价的东西
Why We Hate Cheap Things
你喜欢菠萝吗？它们会让你兴奋得发疯吗？可能不会。很多人很喜欢菠萝，但几乎没有人认为它们非常美味。两百年前的情况截然不同。那时，菠萝确实非常令人兴奋。如果你买了一个菠萝，你会举办一个特别的派对，邀请你所有的朋友来欣赏它——每个人都可以吃一小块，然后他们会在几周后谈论它。
Do you love pineapples? Do they make you feel absolutely crazy with excitement? Probably not. Lots of people quite like pineapples, but hardly anyone thinks they are amazingly wonderful. Two hundred years ago it was very different. At that time, pineapples were very exciting indeed. If you bought a pineapple you would have a special party and invite all your friends round to admire it—everyone would get to eat a tiny little piece, and they’d talk about it for weeks afterwards.
为什么我们对菠萝不像两百年前那样感兴趣呢？它们的味道还是一样——唯一变了的是它们的价格。如今菠萝的价格并不贵，但两百年前它们却非常昂贵。在那个年代，种植菠萝并在长途航行中保持新鲜是非常困难的。它们的价格和今天一辆汽车的价格一样。它们是你能吃到的最昂贵的东西。
Why aren’t we as excited by pineapples as people were two hundred years ago? They still taste the same—the thing that’s changed is their price. Today a pineapple doesn’t cost very much, but two hundred years ago they were extremely expensive. In those days, it was very difficult to grow pineapples and keep them fresh on a long sea voyage. They cost as much as a car costs today. They were the most expensive things you could eat.
但最终，人们找到了轻松种植菠萝的方法，菠萝的价格也下降了。与此同时，人们对菠萝的兴趣也越来越小。菠萝的故事告诉我们一些关于我们自己的事情。当某样东西稀有而昂贵时，我们会觉得它很令人兴奋。但当某样东西便宜又容易得到时，我们就不会太关注它。我们不会再注意到它到底有什么好处。
Eventually, though, people worked out how to grow pineapples quite easily and the price came down. At the same time, people became less and less excited by them. The story of pineapples tells us something about ourselves. When something is rare and expensive we find it exciting. But when something is cheap and easy to get, we stop paying a lot of attention to it. We stop noticing what is actually nice about it.
想象一下洗澡的场景。洗澡是一件非常美妙的事情，但你可能并不觉得它特别有趣。然而，几百年来，人们都认为洗澡是最美妙的事情。他们会为了洗澡而去度假。洗澡并没有改变——只是现在洗澡变得简单又便宜。我们并不认为洗澡有多重要——洗澡有时甚至会让人觉得像是一件苦差事。也许你几乎不会想到一杯水有多美妙。它似乎很无聊。但是如果你一直四处奔波，口渴难耐，当你终于喝到一口水时，你会觉得水很美妙。只有那时你才会注意到水是多么干净、新鲜，喝水的感觉是多么美妙。也许如果水很贵，你只能在特殊场合喝水，你会认为水是你能拥有的最美妙的东西之一。
Think about having a bath. It’s quite nice to have a bath, but you probably do not think it’s especially interesting. However, for hundreds of years people thought that baths were the most amazing things. They would go on holiday just to have a bath. Baths haven’t changed—it’s just that it’s become easy and inexpensive to have one. We don’t think of them as so important—having a bath can sometimes even feel like a bit of a chore. Maybe you hardly think at all about how nice a glass of water can be. It seems pretty boring. But if you’ve been running around and you get very thirsty and your mouth is dry, when you finally get a sip of water it’s amazing. It’s only then that you notice how clean and fresh water is and how lovely it feels to drink it. Maybe if water was very expensive and you could only drink it on special occasions as a treat, you’d think water was one of the nicest things you could possibly have.
有一个很好的技巧可以帮助你记住简单事物的价值。试着对便宜的东西给予你通常给予非常昂贵的东西的那种关注。你可以咬一口土豆角，认真思考它的味道是多么温暖和舒适，就好像你是整个国家第一个尝到它的人一样。或者你可以想象你是世界上唯一一个被允许刷牙的人——你会惊讶于这是一种多么有趣的体验，以及刷完牙后口腔有多么清新。或者试着想象一支铅笔和一辆汽车一样贵——你会开始注意到你可以削铅笔并用它在纸上做记号是多么聪明。
There is a good trick that you can play on yourself that can help you to remember the value of simple things. Try giving something cheap the kind of attention you’d usually give to something very expensive. You could bite into a potato wedge and really think about how warm and comforting it tastes, as if you were the first person to try it in your entire country. Or you could imagine you are the only person in the world who is allowed to brush their teeth—you’d be amazed by what an interesting experience it is, and how fresh your mouth feels afterwards. Or try imagining that a pencil costs as much as a car—you’ll start to notice how clever it is that you can sharpen it and use it to make marks on paper.
我们可以选择关注任何事情——无论多么微小或看似平凡——并使其变得更加美好。
We can choose to give attention to anything—no matter how small or seemingly ordinary—and make it in turn much nicer.
来自玛丽·沃斯通克拉夫特的理念
An Idea From Mary Wollstonecraft
玛丽·沃斯通克拉夫特是一位英国哲学家，出生于 1759 年，距今已有两百多年。她在伦敦长大，童年并不快乐，因为父母经常吵架。长大后，她和姐妹们开办了一所学校——这引起了不小的轰动，因为当时很多人认为只有男孩才能接受良好的教育，但玛丽·沃斯通克拉夫特强烈反对。她是一位非常优秀的老师，还写了一本儿童哲学书（书中有一章是关于拖延症的——我们在本书前面也提到过这个概念）。她喜欢参加聚会，结交了很多有趣的人。她非常勇敢——不太担心别人会怎么看她。有一次，她去了瑞典、挪威和丹麦，试图抢救她朋友被盗的财宝。
Mary Wollstonecraft was an English philosopher who was born in 1759, over two hundred years ago. She was raised in London, and her childhood was not very happy because her parents quarrelled a lot. When she was older, she and her sisters opened a school—this was quite a scandal, because at that time a lot of people thought that only boys should get a good education, but Mary Wollstonecraft disagreed very strongly. She was a very good teacher and she wrote a philosophy book for children (one of the chapters in her book is about procrastination—an idea we met earlier on in this book, too). She liked going to parties and became friends with a lot of interesting people. She was very brave—and not too worried about what people might think of her. Once, she travelled to Sweden, Norway and Denmark to try to rescue some treasure that had been stolen from one of her friends.
玛丽·沃斯通克拉夫特对人们如何花钱非常感兴趣。她试图教导人们在购买任何东西之前认真思考他们真正想要什么。玛丽·沃斯通克拉夫特称这种认真思考的想法是“理性的”。她觉得很多富裕的人把钱浪费在他们不喜欢或不享受的东西上（她绝对不会鼓励人们花大价钱买昂贵的菠萝）。她并不认为贫穷是件好事——她喜欢穿漂亮的衣服，当她从自己写的书中赚钱时，她会非常高兴——但她认为很多人忘记了简单而普通的东西实际上是多么美好。她试图帮助他们记住——希望她也能帮助你记住。
Mary Wollstonecraft was very interested in how people spend money. She tried to teach people to think hard about what they really wanted before they bought anything. Mary Wollstonecraft called this idea of thinking hard about things being ‘rational’. She felt that a lot of well-off people wasted their money on things they did not like or enjoy (she definitely would not have encouraged people to spend a fortune buying expensive pineapples). It is not that she thought it was nice to be poor—she liked wearing nice clothes and was very pleased when she made money from the books she wrote—but she thought that a lot of people forget how nice simple and ordinary things can actually be. She tried to help them remember—and hopefully she can help you remember, too.
大创意 #21
BIG IDEA #21
新闻并不总是讲述整个故事
The News Doesn’t Always Tell the Whole Story
你到处都能看到新闻。电视上和报纸上每天都会刊登大量文章和照片。很多时候新闻并不好：某个地方打仗了；地震或洪水泛滥了；发生了炸弹袭击；或者有人在某个地方伤人或抢劫了。新闻可能很吓人。有时新闻是关于某位著名歌手或运动员，某位富商和他买的新游艇，或者关于政治家做出的重要决定。新闻很多。你可能会觉得新闻告诉你世界上正在发生的一切——也许你对世界的认识就是由你在新闻中看到的东西组成的。
You see what’s on the news everywhere. It’s on television and there are newspapers every day that are filled with articles and photos. Quite often the news is not very nice: there’s a war somewhere; an earthquake has happened, or a flood; there’s been a bomb; or someone has hurt someone or robbed somewhere. It can be frightening. Sometimes the news is about a famous singer or sportsperson, a rich businessman and the new yacht he’s bought, or about politicians making important decisions. There is a lot of news. It can feel like the news is telling you everything that’s going on in the world—maybe your idea of what the world is like is made up of things you have seen on the news.
但新闻有一个非常奇怪的特点：它实际上几乎漏掉了所有事情。想想你在报纸上永远看不到的事情。没有一个故事告诉你上周你在朋友家玩得多么开心，没有一个故事告诉你你哥哥为你妈妈做的生日蛋糕，没有一个故事告诉你你爸爸昨天说了什么有趣的事情，也没有一个故事告诉你当有人给你读故事时你是多么的开心。有很多事情你永远看不到。发生在你生活中但未见于新闻的事情——而那也只是发生在你生活中的事情。几乎每个人都会遇到同样的事情。也许新加坡的两个男孩吵架了，然后又做了朋友。这很重要——但并没有见于新闻。南非的一个女孩可能以为自己丢了她最喜欢的裤子，但后来发现是她妈妈把它们放在了洗衣篮里。这仍然没有见于新闻。也许西班牙马德里的一只猫找到了一个温暖可爱的窗台，并在那里躺了整个下午，但这甚至没有见于当地报纸。每天都会发生数十亿件这样的事情——但没有一件见于新闻。如果见于新闻，你对世界的认识就会截然不同——而且更加正确。
But there is something very strange about the news: it actually misses out nearly everything. Think of all the things that you never see in the newspaper. There wasn’t a story about how you had a good time at your friend’s house last week, or about the cake your brother made your mum for her birthday, or the funny thing your dad said yesterday or about how lovely it is when someone reads you a story. There are lots of things that happen in your life that are not in the news—and that’s just in your life. The same sorts of things are going on for almost everyone. Perhaps two boys in Singapore fell out, then made friends again. That’s important—but it wasn’t in the news. A girl in South Africa could have thought she’d lost her favourite trousers, but it turned out her mum had put them in the laundry basket. Still not in the news. Probably a cat in Madrid in Spain found a lovely warm windowsill and lay there the whole afternoon, but that didn’t even make it into the local papers. There are billions of things like this that happen every day—and none of them are in the news. If they were, you’d get a very different—and more correct—picture of what the world is like.
新闻很少谈论这类故事，因为新闻通常只报道令人震惊或非常不寻常的故事。世界上发生的大多数事情其实并非如此。新闻倾向于关注世界上发生的坏事，让人们了解情况并保持他们的兴趣，但如果我们看太多新闻，我们就会开始觉得世界上的一切都很糟糕。事实并非如此。事实上，也有很多好事和明智的事情在发生——只是它们没有像坏事那样受到同样的关注，所以更难被注意到。想象一下，你拍了一段视频，记录了一天中发生在你身上的三件最糟糕的事情，并把它给你的父母看——他们会对这一天的情况产生完全错误的认识。
These kinds of stories do not get talked about in the news because the news usually only includes the stories that are shocking or very unusual. Most of the things that happen in the world aren’t really like that. The news tends to concentrate on the bad things that happen in the world, to keep people informed and to keep them interested, but if we watch a lot of news we can begin to feel as if everything in the world is awful. It isn’t. Actually, lots of good and wise things are going on as well—it is just that they don’t get the same attention as the bad things, so they are harder to notice. Imagine you made a video of the three worst things that happened to you in one day and showed it to your parents—they’d get a totally wrong idea of what the whole day had been like.
当你观看或阅读新闻时，重要的是要记住，它通常只向你展示世界上正在发生的事情的一小部分。世界并不是那么糟糕——你只是没有看到美好的部分。
When you watch or read the news it is important to remember that it is only usually showing you a very tiny selection of what is going on in the world. The world is not such a bad place—you’re just not being shown the good bits.
雅克·德里达的观点
An Idea From Jacques Derrida
雅克·德里达是一位法国哲学家。他活在很近的年代，从 1930 年到 2004 年。他出生在非洲北海岸的阿尔及利亚，尽管当时阿尔及利亚还是法国的一部分。他非常热衷于足球，最初他想把足球作为自己的职业。（有趣的是，德里达深受我们之前遇到的另一位哲学家阿尔伯特·加缪的启发。加缪也在阿尔及利亚长大，热爱足球。）后来，德里达搬到巴黎上大学。他写了很多书，名声大噪。闲暇时，他喜欢打斯诺克。他也非常喜欢猫，而且他的头发通常很乱。
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher. He lived quite recently, from 1930 until 2004. He was born in Algeria on the north coast of Africa, although in those days Algeria was still part of France. He was very keen on football and originally he wanted to make that his career. (Funnily enough, Derrida was very much inspired by another philosopher who we met earlier, Albert Camus. Camus also grew up in Algeria and loved football.) Later on in his life, Derrida moved to Paris to go to university. He wrote a lot of books and became very famous. In his spare time, he loved playing snooker. He was really fond of cats, too, and his hair was usually quite messy.
德里达对人们所说和不所说非常好奇——人们保持沉默或不愿关注的事情。如果他在读报纸，他总是会思考报纸上本应刊登但却没有刊登的所有故事。为什么它们没有刊登？
Derrida was very curious about what people say, and also what they don’t say—the things people keep quiet about or don’t want to pay attention to. If he was reading a newspaper, he’d always be thinking about all the stories that could be in there but weren’t. Why weren’t they there?
德里达认为，人们忽视某些事情往往有重大原因。这不仅仅是一个错误——他们不仅仅是忘记提到某件事。他们这样做是为了继续说别的话——这样他们就可以假装。报纸和新闻有时也是如此：他们不仅仅是忘记了很多美好或正常的事情一直在发生；他们实际上想让世界看起来比实际情况更加戏剧化和危险。
Derrida thought that people often have big reasons why they ignore things. It’s not just a mistake—they’re not simply forgetting to mention something. They are doing it so they can keep saying something else—so they can pretend. It’s the same sometimes with newspapers and the news: they do not just forget that lots of nice or normal things are going on all the time; they actually want to make it seem like the world is more dramatic and dangerous than it really is.
伟大创意 #22
BIG IDEA #22
艺术就是为我们真正需要的东西做广告
Art Is Advertising for What We Really Need
这个想法听起来可能有点搞笑，但艺术——你在艺术画廊看到的那种艺术——很像广告。广告非常强大。它是世界上最大的产业之一，因为许多大公司都依赖于让人们购买他们销售的产品。每天你可能都会看到数百个广告——披萨、汽车、节日、巧克力棒、玩具、游戏、手表、手袋、鞋子……感觉你可能需要的一切都在广告中。
It might seem like a funny idea, but art—the kind of art you see in an art gallery—is rather like advertising. Advertising is very powerful. It’s one of the biggest businesses in the world, because lots of huge companies depend on getting people to buy what they are selling. Every day you probably see hundreds of adverts—for pizzas, cars, holidays, chocolate bars, toys, games, watches, handbags, shoes… it can feel like absolutely everything you could possibly need is advertised.
但实际上，很多东西都不会被广告宣传——至少，通常不会。对于做一个好朋友，或者和妈妈相处融洽，或者善待兄弟姐妹，或者认识到树木和云朵的可爱之处，或者只是独处时感到快乐，通常都没有任何正常的广告。所有这些都非常重要，但它们通常不会得到广告宣传。除了在艺术领域，它们会得到广告宣传。你可能喜欢做艺术——画画、做拼贴画、绘画和用粘土做东西——但画廊里的艺术似乎很无聊，只适合成年人。但事实并非如此。艺术是为每个人而设的。艺术非常善于宣传生活中一些最重要的东西，否则这些东西可能会被忽视。
But actually, lots of things do not get advertised—at least, not usually. There are not any normal adverts for being a nice friend, or for getting on well with your mum, or for being kind to your brother or sister, or for recognising what is lovely about trees or clouds or for just being happy on your own. All these things are very important, but they do not usually get advertised. Except they sort of do—in art. You might like making art—drawing pictures, doing collages, painting and making things out of clay—but the art in galleries can seem pretty boring and only for adults. That is not really true, though. Art is for everyone. And art is very good at advertising some of the most important things in life that might get overlooked otherwise.
这幅画是一则广告，鼓励你善待你的兄弟姐妹。之所以说它是一则广告，是因为艺术家通过这幅画来表明善待兄弟姐妹很重要，通过使它变得美丽和吸引人，他试图让你想要它。这幅画并不希望你买一架钢琴或蓝色连衣裙；它希望你善待一个有点傻的小孩，就像这个女孩一样。
This painting is an advert for being nice to your brother or sister. It is an advert because by painting it, the artist is saying it is important, and by making it beautiful and appealing, he is trying to get you to want it. The picture doesn’t want you to buy a piano or blue dress; it wants you to be kind to a younger child who is being a bit silly, just like the girl is here.
钢琴练习中断，威廉·巴特尔·范德库伊，1813。
Piano Practice Interrupted, Willem Bartel van der Kooi, 1813.
这幅画是一幅观云广告。通过让云看起来有趣又美丽，它想向你解释你有多喜欢看天空。它不是想让你买任何东西，而是想让你做点什么。
This painting is an advert for looking at clouds. By making the clouds look interesting and pretty, it wants to explain to you how much you might enjoy looking at the sky. It’s not trying to get you to buy anything, but it is trying to get you to do something.
城堡废墟与教堂的风景，雅各布·凡·雷斯达尔，1665–70 年。
A Landscape with a Ruined Castle and a Church, Jacob van Ruisdael, 1665–70.
这是一幅广告，广告要求人们蹲在杂草和泥土中，仔细观察草叶，看看每片叶子的形状如何不同。看着这幅画，你会觉得这样做会很有趣，并密切关注周围的自然。
This is an advert for crouching down among weeds and mud, looking closely at blades of grass and seeing how each leaf is a different shape. Looking at this painting should make you think about how interesting it might be to do that, and to pay close attention to the nature around you.
大块草皮，阿尔布雷希特·丢勒，1503 年。
Great Piece of Turf, Albrecht Dürer, 1503.
有时，一件艺术品会宣传一种感觉。这幅作品宣传的是独自一人时感到安静和快乐。艺术家用手画了线条，并精确测量了它们。她喜欢独自工作，非常专心地专注于她的艺术作品，所以这幅画有助于提醒我们自己做某事是多么有趣。
Sometimes a work of art advertises a feeling. This one is an advert for feeling quiet and happy on your own. The artist drew the lines by hand and measured them all perfectly. She enjoyed working alone and concentrating very carefully on her art, so this picture helps remind us of how fun it can be to do something by ourselves.
《友谊》，艾格尼丝·马丁，1963 年。
Friendship, Agnes Martin, 1963.
有些人认为广告不好，因为它会让我们想要一些我们并不真正需要的东西。他们说得有道理——有些广告确实会这样。但这不是全部。有些东西我们确实需要，被提醒也是件好事。这就是艺术的作用所在——它可以让我们专注于生活中一些美好而重要的事情。如果你想和一件艺术品交朋友，一个好问题是：这个广告有什么好处？
Some people think that advertising is bad because it makes us want things we don’t really need. They’ve got a point—some advertising does do that. But that’s not the whole story. There are things we really do need that it’s good to be reminded of as well. That’s where art comes in—it can make us concentrate on some of the beautiful and important things in life. If you want to make friends with a work of art, a good question to ask is: what nice thing is this advertising?
格奥尔格·威廉·弗里德里希·黑格尔的思想
An Idea From Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
格奥尔格·威廉·弗里德里希·黑格尔是一位德国哲学家，出生于 1770 年，距今已有 200 多年。他在学校学习非常刻苦，几乎总是能取得最高分。后来，他成为一所学校的校长，然后负责一家报社，最后成为一名大学教授。他喜欢熬夜，如果你半夜去柏林的公寓拜访他，你会发现他工作非常努力。他喜欢和朋友一起玩纸牌游戏和唱歌，还写了巨著，非常复杂。他确实非常出名。
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher who was born just over two hundred years ago, in 1770. He worked very hard at school and almost always got top grades. Later, he became the headmaster of a school and then he was in charge of a newspaper before eventually he became a university professor. He liked to stay up very late and if you had visited him in his flat in Berlin at midnight, you would have found him working hard. He loved playing card games and singing songs with his friends and he wrote enormous, very complicated books. He became very famous indeed.
黑格尔很喜欢创意，但他也意识到创意的悲哀之处：我们很容易忽视创意。他意识到，通常我们需要先看到和感受到事物，然后才能兴奋起来。如果有人告诉你澳大利亚的海滩很棒，那对你来说可能没什么影响——但如果你看到一张照片，你就会觉得不同了。照片上是一条又长又宽的柔软沙滩，岩石、海浪和温暖的阳光。这让你脑海中浮现出一个美丽海滩的形象。如果你仔细想想，就会明白，因为看到和感受到对我们来说非常重要。我们在婴儿时期就能看到和感受到，但只有长大后才开始思考。所以，黑格尔说，艺术要做的就是将创意与我们的感受结合起来。黑格尔说，艺术创造出你能看到和感受到的创意。这让创意更加强大。
Hegel liked ideas a lot, but he realised something quite sad about them: we can very easily ignore them. He realised that usually we need to see and feel things before we can get excited. If someone just tells you that the beaches in Australia are great, that probably does not make much difference to you—but if you see a picture it might. The picture shows you the long, wide strip of soft sand, the rocks and waves and the warm sunshine. That makes the idea of a nice beach come alive in your brain. It makes sense if you think about it, because seeing and feeling are very important to us. We see and feel even when we are little babies, but we only start to think when we are older. So what art has to do, Hegel said, is to join up an idea with our feelings. Hegel said that art makes ideas that you can see and feel. And that makes them much more powerful.
伟大创意 #23
BIG IDEA #23
为什么有些人的薪水比其他人高？
Why Do Some People Get Paid More Than Others?
人们从事不同的工作，获得的报酬也有很大差异。有些工作能赚很多钱，而有些工作只能赚很少的钱。为什么会有这种差异？为什么顶级足球运动员或律师事务所负责人的薪水比公交车司机或咖啡馆工作人员高得多？
People get paid very different amounts of money for the work they do. For some jobs, you get a lot of money, but for others, only a little. Why is there this difference? Why does a top football player or someone in charge of a law firm get paid so much more than a bus driver or someone who works in a café?
薪酬并不取决于工作有多好或做这项工作的人有多好。真正重要的问题是：“有多少人可以做这项工作？”如果很多人都能很好地完成一项工作，那么薪酬通常会较低。大多数人都可以开公共汽车或当服务员，所以如果你经营一家公共汽车公司或一家咖啡馆，需要一名新员工，你不必花很多钱就能找到人来做这件事。
Pay does not depend on how nice a job is or how nice the person who does it is. The really important question is: ‘How many people can do this job?’ If lots of people could do a job quite well then the pay will often be less. Most people could manage to drive a bus or be a waiter or waitress, so if you were running a bus firm or a café and you needed a new worker you wouldn’t have to offer much money to get someone to do it.
但假设你负责一个足球俱乐部，你希望你的球队赢得很多比赛。你必须招募最优秀的球员。几乎没有球员足够优秀。所有的俱乐部都希望这些人为他们效力，所以他们提供越来越多的钱来吸引极少数真正有天赋和技术的球员。或者你是一家律师事务所的老板。
But suppose you are in charge of a football club and you want your team to win a lot of matches. You have to get the very best players. There will be hardly any players good enough. All the clubs want these people to play for them, so they offer more and more money to attract the very few really talented and skilled players. Or maybe you’re the boss at a law firm.
只有少数人对所有不同的法律有足够的了解，能够做好这项工作，而许多公司都想雇用他们。所以你必须提供越来越多的钱来吸引最优秀的人才。这解释了为什么几乎没有人能赚很多钱。唯一真正高薪的工作是几乎没有人能做好的工作。任何很多人都能做的工作都不会得到很好的报酬，因为他们不必说服人们去做——这份工作只会得到平均的正常报酬。
Only a few people know enough about all the different laws to do the job well, and lots of firms would like to hire them. So you would have to offer more and more money to attract the best people. This explains why hardly anyone makes a lot of money. The only jobs that pay really well are jobs that hardly anyone can do well. Any job that a lot of people can do won’t be paid very well, because they don’t have to convince people to do it—it will just be paid an average, normal amount.
这也是为什么高薪工作并不总是特别令人愉快的原因。它们通常压力很大。如果你的薪水很高，人们就会期望你一直都把工作做得非常好。如果服务员把果汁洒在别人身上，那有点烦人，但这真的是一个很小的问题。然而，如果一家律师事务所的负责人犯了一个错误，可能会让律师事务所损失数百万英镑。总有大事可能出错——他们知道这一点。
This is also why highly-paid jobs are not always particularly enjoyable. They’re usually very stressful. If you’re being paid a lot of money, people expect you to be very good at what you are doing, all the time. If a waiter or waitress spills some juice on someone, that’s a bit annoying, but it’s really quite a small problem. However, if the person in charge of a law firm makes a mistake it could cost the firm millions of pounds. There is always something big that could go wrong—and they know it.
不幸的是，即使你擅长某件事，你也可能无法赚很多钱。这取决于人们需要你做这件事的程度。假设你非常擅长单腿站立——你可以坚持几个小时。这真是太棒了。但这可能不会让你变得富有，因为没有多少人需要或希望你这样做。
Unfortunately, even if you are very good at something, you still might not make a lot of money. It depends on how much people need you to do it. Suppose you are very, very good at standing on one leg—you can do it for hours. That’s amazing. But it’s probably not going to make you rich, because there aren’t many people who need or want you to do that.
如果你想找到一份薪水丰厚的工作，你必须记住两件事：你必须弄清楚自己能做得很好，而其他人却想做什么，你必须弄清楚自己在多大程度上会介意高薪工作通常带来的压力。你还必须记住，许多薪水不高的工作仍然非常重要，而且很有趣。一些有史以来最伟大的艺术家和作家在赚钱方面并不成功。世界上有很多重要人物并不富有。
If you want to have a job that pays well, there are two things you have to keep in mind: you have to work out what you can do very well that lots of other people want done, and you have to work out how much you would mind the stress that usually goes with a high-paying job. You also have to remember that lots of jobs which don’t pay that well are still very important and fun to do. Some of the greatest artists and writers who ever lived were not very successful when it came to making money. There are lots of important people in the world who are not rich.
亚当·斯密的思想
An Idea From Adam Smith
亚当·斯密大约 250 年前出生于苏格兰。他在乡下长大，喜欢探索山丘和树林。他在学校表现很好，长大后在大学里找到了一份教书的工作。他是一名非常优秀的老师。他热衷于善良和同情心（对他人的感受很敏感），但他也对金钱的运作方式以及人们（和整个国家）如何赚更多的钱非常感兴趣。这对他来说非常重要，因为在他年轻的时候，苏格兰是一个相当贫穷的国家——不是每个人都有鞋穿，也没有足够的食物。
Adam Smith was born in Scotland about two hundred and fifty years ago. He grew up in the countryside and loved exploring the hills and woods. He was pretty good at school and when he was older he got a job teaching in a university. He was a very good teacher. He was interested in kindness and sympathy (being sensitive to what other people are feeling), but he was also very interested in how money works and in how people (and whole countries) can make more money. This was very important to him because when he was younger, Scotland was quite a poor country—not everyone had shoes or enough to eat.
亚当·斯密说，赚钱的方法是考虑别人需要什么，然后以更低的成本制造这些东西。例如，每个人都需要鞋子，但在苏格兰，很多人没有鞋子，因为鞋子的制造成本太高（一个人要花一整天的时间才能做一双鞋）。亚当·斯密说，诀窍是开办一家鞋厂。使用机器并组织许多人意味着你可以更快、更便宜地制造更多的鞋子，这样更多的人就可以买到它们。
Adam Smith said that the way to make money is to think about what other people need, and then to make those things more cheaply. Everyone needs shoes, for instance, but in Scotland a lot of people didn’t have shoes because they cost so much to make (it took a whole day for one person to make a pair of shoes). The trick, said Adam Smith, was to start a shoe factory. Using machines and getting a lot of people organised means that you can make a lot more shoes much more quickly and cheaply, so lots more people can buy them.
亚当·斯密意识到了一件相当令人惊奇的事情：如果你想赚钱，仅仅问“人们需要什么？”是不够的。你必须想办法以低成本制造出大量这些东西，以便让尽可能多的人能够用得上。
Adam Smith realised something rather amazing: if you want to make money, it is not enough just to ask, ‘What do people need?’ You have to work out how to make a lot of those things cheaply so that they are accessible to the greatest number of people.
伟大创意 #24
BIG IDEA #24
什么是公平？
What’s Fair?
有些家庭有更多，有些家庭有更少。有些人有游泳池，而有些人甚至没有花园。有些人经常外出度假，而有些人必须呆在家里。有些房子很大，但有些房子一点也不漂亮。
Some families have more and some families have less. Some people have swimming pools, while others do not even have a garden. Some people go on lots of holidays and others have to stay at home. Some houses are huge, but others are not very nice at all.
有些人拥有很多好东西，而其他人却没有，这公平吗？哲学家们对公平的本质进行了深入思考。他们被称为“政治”哲学家，他们试图找出让世界更加公平的方法。但在做到这一点之前，他们必须提出一个棘手的问题：什么是“公平”？“公平”究竟意味着什么？
Is it fair that some people have lots of nice things and others do not? Philosophers have thought a lot about what makes things fair. They are called ‘political’ philosophers, and they try to work out how the world can be fairer. But before they can do that, they have to ask a tricky question: what is ‘fair’? What does ‘fair’ actually mean?
想象一下，你正在切一块披萨和其他人分享。如果有六个人，把它切成六块大小相同的披萨似乎是公平的。这样每个人得到的都会一样。如果你掌管世界，你能对金钱、房子和美好的假期做同样的事情吗？如果你给每个人一模一样的东西，这公平吗？你会这么想，但也许不是。有些人比其他人工作更努力。有些人人们有非常好的想法，可以帮助很多人。如果他们能得到更多，也许就好了。或者，如果某人的父母真的很好——他们帮助孩子很多，认真倾听，带他们去有趣的旅行。你会说：“因为其他人没有这么好的父母，所以你有这么好的父母，这是不公平的——你的父母不应该对你这么好。”或者，如果某人真的很擅长数学或跑步，这公平吗？你会说：“你必须穿很重的鞋子，错过所有的数学课，这样每个人都可以在跑步和数学方面一样好”吗？可能不会。
Imagine you are cutting up a pizza to share with other people. If there are six people it seems only fair to cut it into six pieces that are all the same size. Then everyone will get the same. If you were in charge of the world, could you do the same with money and houses and nice holidays? Would it be fair if you gave everyone exactly the same? You would think so, but maybe not. Some people work much harder than others. Some people have very good ideas that help a lot of other people. Maybe it’s OK if they get more. Or what if someone’s parents are really quite nice—they help their children lots and listen carefully and take them on interesting trips. Could you say: ‘It is not fair that you have such nice parents because other people do not have such nice parents—your parents should not be allowed to be so good to you’? Or, if someone is really good at maths or running, is that fair? Would you say: ‘You’ll have to wear very heavy shoes and miss all the maths lessons so that everyone can be the same at running and at maths’? Probably not.
因此，让所有事物都变得相同的想法可能行不通。当然会有一些差异。问题是，这些差异会有多大？为了使一切尽可能公平，你会希望每个人都尽可能平等。想想这个：如果你甚至在出生之前就能从天空俯瞰整个世界，那会怎样？你可以看到所有人过着的生活，但你不知道哪种生活会属于你。你可以看到所有的家庭，但你不知道你会出生在哪个家庭，住在哪所房子里，上哪所学校。你可能很幸运，降落在一个好地方，得到一些非常好的东西，或者你可能不幸，得到最糟糕的东西。
So maybe the idea of making everything the same doesn’t really work. Of course there will be some differences. The problem is, how big will they be? To make everything as fair as possible, you’d want everyone to be as equal as possible. Think about this: what if, before you were even born, you were able to look down from the sky at the whole world. You can see all the lives that people are leading, but you don’t know which life was going to be yours. You can see all the families, but you don’t know which family you might be born into, what house you’ll live in or what school you’ll go to. You might be lucky and land in a nice place and get some very nice things, or you might be unlucky and get the worst ones.
看看一个国家，你可能会看到一些非常棒的地方。那里有家庭拥有直升机和带有两个游泳池的漂亮房子。但随后你会发现，这个国家的大多数家庭几乎一无所有，大多数学校都摇摇欲坠。你最终可能会遇到一些可怕的事情，所以那个国家看起来不太有吸引力。
Looking at one country, you might see some really great places you could land. There are families with helicopters and amazing houses with two swimming pools. But then you notice that most of the families in this country have hardly anything, and most of the schools are crumbling. The chances are that you could end up with something horrible, so that country doesn’t seem very appealing.
然后你看看另一个国家。在这个国家，有很多好地方（尽管没有人拥有直升机或两个游泳池）。几乎没有真正糟糕的地方。即使没有那么多钱的人也还过得去。也许他们的房子小了点，但还可以；也许有一所学校不太好，但也不是那么糟糕。也许你会认为选择这个国家更明智——即使你最终得到了这里最糟糕的地方，你的生活仍然会相当不错。
Then you look at another country. In this country, there are quite a lot of good places (though no one at all owns a helicopter or has two swimming pools). There are hardly any really awful places. Even the people who do not have so much still have enough. Maybe their house is smaller but it’s still OK; maybe there is a school that is not quite as good, but it is not that bad. Probably you would think that it’s wiser to choose this country—even if you end up getting the worst place here, your life will still be pretty good.
思考这样的国家是一个有趣的测试，可以测试一个国家是否公平。完全的平等和公平可能是不可能的，并不是每个人都能拥有相同的权利，但至少在第二个国家，没有人会过得很糟糕，而其他人却拥有一切。
Thinking about countries like this is an interesting test for how fair a country is. Total equality and fairness might not be possible, and not everyone will have the same, but at least in the second country no one is having a really awful time while other people have everything.
适宜居住的地方
Fair Places to Live
想象一下你出生前的自己。你可以选择世界上任何一个国家居住，但你无法知道你会富裕还是贫穷。你会选择住在哪里？这告诉你什么？
Imagine yourself before your birth. You can choose any country in the world to live in, but you can’t tell whether you will be rich or poor. Where would you choose to live? What does that tell you?
约翰·罗尔斯的观点
An Idea From John Rawls
有一位名叫约翰·罗尔斯的美国哲学家，他生活的时间并不长——从 1921 年到 2002 年。对于一位哲学家来说，这已经是相当近了，因为很多哲学家都生活在很久以前。似乎所有的哲学家都是古代人，但哲学的好处在于，一个好的想法是何时产生的并不重要。有些好的想法已经存在了很长时间，而另一些则相当新——但重要的是它们对我们有多大帮助。
There was an American philosopher called John Rawls who lived not too long ago—from 1921 to 2002. That is quite recent for a philosopher, many of whom lived a long time ago. It might seem like all philosophers are ancient, but the good thing about philosophy is that it doesn’t really matter when a good idea was thought up. Some good ideas have been around for a long time, while others are quite new—but what matters is how helpful they are to us.
约翰·罗尔斯在美国巴尔的摩长大。他的家庭相当富裕，父母对他很好，但附近住着许多非常贫穷和不幸的人，甚至在孩提时代他就对此感到担忧。为什么其他人的生活如此艰难，而他的生活却如此美好？他决定长大后要尝试做点什么。
John Rawls grew up in Baltimore in the USA. His family was quite well off and his parents were very good to him, but there were lots of very poor and unhappy people who lived nearby and even as a child he was worried about this. Why was his life so nice when other people had such a difficult time? He decided he’d try to do something about it when he grew up.
令他印象深刻的一件事是，即使在富裕的国家，通常也有很多生活糟糕的人。问题不在于如何让这个国家更富裕（它已经很富裕了），而在于如何分割它已经拥有的好东西。为什么没有发生这种情况？他认为这是因为我们对什么是公平没有共同的认识。这就是他发明我们刚刚看到的测试的原因。他称之为“无知之幕”。如果你不知道你将不得不生活在哪个国家，你会认为这是一个可以居住的国家吗？如果我们有好的想法，我们就可以尝试解决真正困难的问题。
One thing that really struck him was that even in countries that are rich, there are usually still a lot of people who have terrible lives. The problem isn’t how to make this country richer (it’s rich already), but how to split up the good things it already has. Why doesn’t that happen? He thought it was because we don’t have a shared idea of what’s fair. That’s why he invented the test that we’ve just been looking at. He called this the ‘veil of ignorance’. Would you think this was an OK country to live in, if you didn’t know which bit of it you were going to have to live in? If we have good ideas we can try to solve really difficult problems.
伟大创意 #25
BIG IDEA #25
害羞：如何克服它
Shyness: How to Overcome It
你可能对害羞了解颇多。孩子们在陌生人面前常常会感到害羞。如果你刚进一所新学校，那里你谁也不认识，你可能会觉得很难认识那里的其他孩子——如果他们不喜欢你怎么办？或者也许有一次你的妈妈或爸爸带你去拜访他们的一些朋友。他们看起来如此不同。他们来自另一个国家。也许他们有一个比你大的女儿，她的名字叫“玛丽-克里斯汀”，你不知道该怎么说。她看起来如此不同。你想不出该说什么。你感到害羞。
You probably know quite a lot about shyness. Children very often feel shy around new people. If you start at a new school where you do not know anyone, you probably feel like it’s going to be difficult to get to know the other children there—what if they don’t like you? Or perhaps one time your mum or dad takes you to visit some of their friends. They seem so different. They come from another country. Maybe they have a daughter who is older than you and has a name you don’t know how to say, ‘Marie-Christine’. She seems so different. You cannot think of anything to say. You feel shy.
让我们试着探究一下害羞的本质，看看它到底是由什么构成的。害羞是指因为某人是陌生人，你不知道该对他们说什么或如何表现。和朋友在一起通常很容易，因为你已经知道他们是什么样的人——你知道他们喜欢谈论什么，喜欢做什么。但和一个陌生人在一起，感觉会很难。这其实很正常。你只需要找出他们是什么样的人。这不是因为你或他们有什么问题。你只是不知道他们是什么样的人，也不知道他们如何表现才感到舒服。一开始不可能知道这些——对每个人来说都是如此。
Let’s try to look inside shyness and see what it’s actually made of. Shyness is the idea that because someone is a stranger, you do not know what to say to them or how to act. With your friends it’s usually easy because you already know what they are like—you know what they like talking about and what they like doing. But with a new person, it can feel very hard. That’s actually very normal. You just have to find out what they’re like. It is not because there’s something wrong with you, or with them. You just don’t know what they are like, or how they feel comfortable behaving. It is impossible to know that at the beginning—for everyone.
一个想法可以极大地改变你的感受。即使另一个人看起来和听起来都不一样，而且你也不认识他们，但你可以肯定他们和你没有什么不同。玛丽·克里斯汀的发型可能和你不一样，也许她从来没有看过你最喜欢的电视节目，当你大声喧哗时她很安静，但你们可能有一些共同点。如果你有兴趣去露营，你可以问她是否曾经露营过。或者，如果你喜欢跳舞或表演，你可以问她是否也喜欢做这些事情。也许她不会喜欢完全相同的东西（那将非常不寻常），但你们都会对某件事感兴趣。试着找出答案是件好事。还要记住，她可能和你有同样的感受。
The thing that can make a big difference to how you feel is an idea. Even though another person looks and sounds different and you don’t know them, you can be sure that really they aren’t different from you. Marie-Christine might do her hair differently to you, and maybe she’s never watched any of your favourite TV programmes and is quiet while you are loud, but you probably have some things in common. If you’re interested in going camping, you could ask her if she has ever been camping. Or if you like dancing or acting, you could ask if she likes doing those things, too. Probably she won’t like exactly the same things (that would be very unusual) but there will be something you are both interested in. And it’s good to try to find out. Remember, too, that she probably feels just the same way that you do.
您可能没有意识到，很多成年人也会害羞。问题总是相同的。他们认为，因为某人有点不同，所以他们之间不会有任何共同点。您与从未见过的人之间可能有什么共同点并不总是很明显，尤其是当他们来自不同的地方或与您年龄不同时，但实际上他们一定与您有很多共同点。因为他们也是人。发生在您身上的基本事情也发生在他们身上：他们有父母和朋友，他们会感到无聊和孤独，他们会害怕，他们会担心事情，他们喜欢故事（尽管您还不知道是哪些故事），他们有爱好（尽管您一开始不知道是什么爱好），他们喜欢度假（但您不知道去哪里度假）。每个人都有这些问题和兴趣。因此，即使您是第一次见到某人，您也大致知道从哪里开始寻找你们共同的东西——即使是与玛丽·克里斯汀。
You might not realise it, but a lot of grown-ups get shy too. It’s always the same problem. They think that because someone is a bit different, they won’t have anything in common. It’s not always obvious what you might have in common with someone you’ve never met before, especially if they come from a different place or are a different age from you, but actually they must have a lot in common with you. Because they are a human being, too. And the same basic things that have happened to you, have happened to them: they’ve got parents, and friends, they get bored and lonely, they get frightened, they worry about things, they like stories (though you don’t know which ones yet), they have hobbies (though you don’t know what they are at first), they like going on holiday (but you don’t know where). Everyone has these problems and these kinds of interests. So even if you are meeting someone for the first time, you know roughly where to start looking for things you share—even with Marie-Christine.
迈蒙尼德的理念
An Idea From Maimonides
迈蒙尼德是一位犹太哲学家，他出生于 12世纪西班牙科尔多瓦，距今已有 800 多年。他非常疼爱弟弟。长大后，他先在摩洛哥当医生，后来又去了埃及，成为埃及苏丹或统治者的私人医生。他对如何成为一个好人很感兴趣，对我们之前遇到的希腊思想家亚里士多德印象深刻。
Maimonides was a Jewish philosopher who was born in Cordoba, Spain, in the 12th century—more than eight hundred years ago. He was very fond of his younger brother. When he grew up he worked as a doctor in Morocco and then in Egypt, where he became the personal doctor to the sultan, or ruler, of the country. He was interested in how to be a good person and was very impressed by Aristotle, the Greek thinker we met earlier.
迈蒙尼德对人们看起来如此不同的方式非常感兴趣——他们长相不同，喜欢不同的游戏，擅长不同的事情，年龄不同，生活在不同的国家，喜欢吃不同的早餐，穿着不同的衣服。我们倾向于看着其他人或人群，然后觉得“这些人和我不一样，我无法理解他们或与他们交朋友”。但迈蒙尼德不喜欢这种态度。他认为，在所有这些差异的背后，我们实际上都非常相似——我们有很多真正重要的共同点。善良和爱对每个人都很重要。每个人都希望被喜欢和理解（即使他们没有这么说）。细节因人而异，但作为人的基本形象对每个人来说都是一样的。事实上，我们比我们通常想象的更像其他人。没有必要这么害羞。
Maimonides was very interested in the ways in which people seem so different—they look different, they enjoy different games, they are good at different things, they are different ages, they live in different countries, they like having different things for breakfast, they wear different clothes. We tend to look at other people—or groups of people—and feel ‘these people are not like me, I can’t understand them or be friends with them’. But Maimonides did not like this attitude. He thought that behind all these differences we are all actually quite similar—we share a lot that’s really important. Kindness and love are important to everyone. Everyone wants to be liked and understood (even if they don’t say so). The details vary from person to person but the basic picture of being human is the same for everyone. We are actually much more like other people than we usually think. There is no need to be so shy.
大创意 #26
BIG IDEA #26
成年人的生活为何如此艰难
Why Grown-up Life Is Hard
你曾经为成年人感到难过吗？尤其是为你自己父母感到难过？这听起来有点奇怪，因为成年人似乎有很多优势。他们可以做任何他们想做的事（不用上学，不用睡觉），他们有钱，他们会开车，他们知道很多事情。然而，有时你可能会看到他们看起来很担心或悲伤——甚至哭泣。
Have you ever felt sorry for a grown-up? In particular, for your own parents? It sounds a little strange because adults seem to have so many advantages. They can do whatever they want (no school, no bedtimes), they have money, they can drive and they know lots of things. Sometimes, though, you might see them looking worried or sad—or even crying.
成年人的生活出了什么问题？仔细想想，很多事情都可能出错。也许一个成年人最终会从事一份他们不太喜欢的工作。他们不得不将一生的大部分时间花在工作上，做着他们不喜欢的工作。停止工作并不容易，因为他们需要钱，而且很难找到更好的工作。他们觉得自己可以做得更好。他们可能有尚未充分发展的才能。或者他们觉得自己嫁错了人。这似乎是一个很难犯的错误，但事实并非如此。这就像和某人交朋友，但结果发现你们没有太多共同点。你可能以前经历过这种情况。但当你结婚时，问题就大得多了，因为你们可能有孩子，或者一起住一栋房子，你会觉得离开这一切是一件非常可怕的事情。成年人也经常担心钱的问题。他们可能花的太多，也可能赚的不够。困扰成年人的另一件大事就是变老。现在，你可能觉得你面前有无穷无尽的时间，有太多可能发生的事情。成年人经常觉得他们没有足够的时间——他们已经度过了人生的一半或更长时间。他们觉得时间不多了。
What goes wrong with adult life? Quite a lot of things can, once you think about it. Maybe an adult ends up doing a job they don’t like that much. They have to spend a huge part of their life at work, doing the job they don’t enjoy. It’s not easy to stop doing it, because they need the money and it is tricky finding something better. They feel that they could be doing something better with their life. They might have talents they have not properly developed. Or perhaps they feel like they married the wrong person. It seems as if that would be a hard mistake to make, but it’s not really. It’s like making friends with someone but it turns out you don’t have much in common. You may have experienced that before. But when you get married, it’s a much bigger problem because you might have children with them, or share a house together, and you would feel terrible about leaving all of that. Adults often worry about money, too. Maybe they spend too much, or maybe they don’t make enough. Another of the big things that bothers adults is getting older. At the moment, you probably feel like you have endless time stretching out before you, with so many possibilities for what might happen. Adults often feel like they don’t have enough time—they’ve already lived half of their life or more. They feel that time is running out.
更好地处理成年人生活中的问题是可能的。但这很棘手。人们不会教你怎么做。你需要很多技能：如何选择与谁结婚，如何处理金钱，如何选择一份你真正喜欢的工作，如何面对你每天都在变老和秃顶的事实。一般来说，人们不会学这些技能。这有点像在没有先上过任何课程的情况下被要求驾驶飞机。驾驶飞机并非不可能，但你不能不做任何准备就开飞机——你需要学习技能。成为一个成年人需要很多技能，但成年人通常不会被教这些技能。
It is possible to manage the problems of adult life better. But it’s tricky. People don’t teach you how to do it. You need a lot of skills: how to choose who to get married to, how to deal with money, how to choose a job you really like, how to face the fact that you are getting older every day and are going bald. Generally people don’t get taught these skills. It’s a bit like being asked to fly a plane without having any lessons first. It’s not impossible to fly a plane, but you can’t do it without any preparation—you need to learn the skills. You need a lot of skills to be an adult, but adults aren’t usually taught them.
成年人常常认为孩子是“无辜的”。他们并不是说孩子总是可爱又乖巧（他们没那么傻）。他们指的是孩子还不知道成长过程中的一些正常而困难的事情。成年人通常不会告诉孩子他们的问题。这是可以理解的：他们试图表现得善良，让你不要担心未来，这样你就可以享受现在的生活。
Quite often grown-ups see children as ‘innocent’. They don’t really mean that children are lovely and sweet all the time (they’re not that stupid). What they mean is that children don’t yet know about some of the normal, difficult things that come with growing up. Adults don’t often tell children about their problems. That’s understandable: they’re trying to be kind and stop you from worrying about the future, so that you can enjoy what’s going on now.
但也许还有另一种想法。也许，如果你现在就了解成年人生活中的正常烦恼，在它们发生之前，你会发现它们其实并不那么可怕，而且到时候你就可以学会如何更好地应对它们。
But maybe there’s another idea. Maybe, if you learn about the normal troubles of adult life now, before they happen, you will see that they are not so scary after all, and you can learn how to deal with them better when the time comes.
来自哲学的想法
An Idea From... Philosophy
哲学是我们应对生活困难的方法之一。它帮助我们的主要方法之一是在我们迫切需要之前向我们提供有关事物的信息，以便我们做好准备。我们不能只关注现在发生的事情，而要勇敢地仔细审视生活中将来会发生什么——看看可能出错的地方。我们不必立即处理这些事情，但总有一天我们会处理的。所以假装它们不会发生是没有意义的。
Philosophy is one of the ways that we deal with the difficulties of life. One of the main ways that it helps us is by giving us information about things before we desperately need it, so that we can be prepared. Rather than only concentrating on what is happening right now, we have to be brave and look quite carefully at the things that will happen in life later on—and to see what might go wrong. We don’t have to deal with those things straight away, but one day we will. So there’s no point in pretending they will not happen.
不过，我们这样做并不是为了让自己现在过得痛苦。我们这样做并不是想通过意识到我们以后可能会过得不好来破坏我们此刻的幸福。事实上，恰恰相反。如果你早早地知道自己将面临的挑战，你就可以开始培养应对这些挑战所需的技能。这有点像爬一座很高的山。如果你认为这会很容易而且很有趣，你会惊讶地发现，实际上，它相当困难。但如果你事先通过爬很多小山进行训练，并与已经爬过山的人交谈（这些人一路上犯了很多错误），你就可以从发生在他们身上的事情中吸取教训，做好准备。你需要一种可以提前给你信息并教你所需技能的登山朋友。
We’re not doing this to make ourselves miserable now, though. It’s not trying to ruin the happiness we have at the moment by realising that we might have a bad time later. Actually, it is the opposite. If you have an idea of the challenges you’ll face early on, you can start to develop the skills you will need to cope with them. It’s a bit like climbing a very high mountain. If you think it’s going to be easy and fun, you will be shocked to find out that actually, it’s pretty difficult. But if you train beforehand by walking up lots of smaller mountains, and you talk to people who’ve done it already (and who have made plenty of mistakes along the way), you can learn from what’s happened to them and prepare yourself. You need a kind of mountain-climbing friend who can give you information in advance and teach you the skills you need.
哲学就像这样——但显然它与攀登高山无关。哲学是关于我们如何面对成人生活中的正常困难。它并不害怕生活有多么棘手——它拥有丰富的经验，并且以前都经历过。
Philosophy is rather like this—but obviously it’s not got anything to do with climbing mountains. Philosophy is about how we face the normal difficulties of adult life. It’s not frightened about how tricky life can be—it’s got loads of experience, and has done it all before.
从这个意义上说，哲学是一种“人生之友”。它不是一个人，而是一群人和他们的想法。他们面临很多困难，并试图学习如何应对。这本书试图给你一些关于如何理解生活的想法，以及如何让生活变得比有时看起来更容易一些。这也是哲学试图做的事情。
In this way, philosophy is a kind of ‘life-friend’. It is not a person—it’s a whole group of people and their ideas. They’ve faced a lot of troubles and tried to learn how to deal with them. This book tries to give you some ideas about how you can understand life, and how to make it a bit easier than it sometimes turns out to be. That’s what philosophy tries to do, too.
指数
INDEX
思想家名单
List of Thinkers
佛 Buddha 公元前 563 年 – 公元前 483 年 563 BC – 483 BC |
孔子 Confucius 公元前 551 年 – 公元前 479 年 551 BC – 479 BC 陸州（今中国） Lu, Zhou (now China) |
苏格拉底 Socrates 公元前 470 年 – 公元前 399 年 470 BC – 399 BC 希腊雅典 Athens, Greece |
亚里士多德 Aristotle 公元前 384 年 – 公元前 322 年 384 BC – 322 BC 希腊雅典 Athens, Greece |
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塞内加 Seneca 公元前4年 – 公元65年 4 BC – AD 65 意大利，罗马 Rome, Italy |
亚历山大的希帕提娅 Hypatia of Alexandria 360（大约） - 415 360 (approx) – 415 埃及亚历山大 Alexandria, Egypt |
伊本西那（阿维森纳） Ibn Sina (Avicenna) 980 – 1037 980 – 1037 波斯布哈拉和伊朗哈马丹 Bukhara, Persia & Hamadan, Iran |
迈蒙尼德 Maimonides 1135 – 1204 1135 – 1204 摩洛哥和埃及 Morocco & Egypt |
米歇尔·德·蒙田 Michel de Montaigne 1533 – 1592 1533 – 1592 法国吉耶讷 Guyenne, France |
勒内·笛卡尔 René Descartes 1596 – 1650 1596 – 1650 法国、荷兰和瑞典 France, Netherlands & Sweden |
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泽拉·雅各布 Zera Yacob 1599 – 1692 1599 – 1692 埃塞俄比亚埃姆法拉兹 Emfraz, Ethiopia |
松尾芭蕉 Matsuo Basho 1664 – 1694 1664 – 1694 日本大阪 Osaka, Japan |
让·雅克·卢梭 Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712 – 1778 1712 – 1778 瑞士和法国 Switzerland & France |
亚当·斯密 Adam Smith 1723 – 1790 1723 – 1790 苏格兰爱丁堡 Edinburgh, Scotland |
伊曼纽尔康德 Immanuel Kant 1724 – 1804 1724 – 1804 普鲁士柯尼斯堡（现俄罗斯） Königsberg, Prussia (now Russia) |
玛丽·沃斯通克拉夫特 Mary Wollstonecraft 1759 – 1797 1759 – 1797 英国伦敦 London, England |
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格奥尔格·威廉·弗里德里希·黑格尔 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770 – 1831 1770 – 1831 德国柏林 Berlin, Germany |
拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生 Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 – 1882 1803 – 1882 美国马萨诸塞州 Massachusetts, U.S.A |
弗里德里希·尼采 Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900 1844 – 1900 瑞士和德国 Switzerland & Germany |
路德维希·维特根斯坦 Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951 1889 – 1951 奥地利维也纳 & 英国剑桥 Vienna, Austria & Cambridge, England |
让·保罗·萨特 Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980 1905 – 1980 法国巴黎 Paris, France |
西蒙娜·波伏娃 Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986 1908 – 1986 法国巴黎 Paris, France |
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阿尔贝·加缪 Albert Camus 1913 – 1960 1913 – 1960 阿尔及利亚和法国 Algeria & France |
約翰·羅爾斯 John Rawls 1921 – 2002 1921 – 2002 美国马萨诸塞州 Massachusetts, U.S.A |
雅克·德里达 Jacques Derrida 1930 – 2004 1930 – 2004 阿尔及利亚和法国 Algeria & France |
生命学校
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE
生命学校是一家致力于培养情商的全球组织。我们将心理学、哲学和文化运用到日常生活中。我们制作了一系列贴心的文具、游戏和礼物，作为课程、书籍和视频的补充，启发我们、安慰我们并解释人类的状况。
The School of Life is a global organisation dedicated to developing emotional intelligence. We apply psychology, philosophy and culture to everyday life. We have created a range of thoughtful stationery, games and gifts that complement our classes, books and videos, to enlighten us about, console us for and explain the human condition.
作品清单P 128 – P 129
LIST OF ARTWORKS P 128 – P 129
威廉·巴特尔·范德库伊，《钢琴练习中断》，1813 年。布面油画，147 厘米 × 121 厘米。阿姆斯特丹国立博物馆。由吕伐登 H. van der Kooi 捐赠。
雅各布·凡·雷斯达尔，《城堡废墟与教堂风景》，1665 年。布面油画，109 厘米 x 146 厘米。伦敦国家美术馆。
阿尔布雷希特·丢勒，《大块草皮》，1503 年。水彩画，40 厘米 × 31 厘米。阿尔贝蒂娜，维也纳。
Albrecht Dürer, Great Piece of Turf, 1503. Watercolour, 40 cm × 31 cm. Albertina, Vienna.
图片来源P 151–P 155
IMAGE CREDITS P 151–P 155
GUATAMA BUDDHA，'无标题'，susuteh。知识共享。
GUATAMA BUDDHA,‘Untitled’, susuteh. Creative Commons.
孔子，《孔子》，纸上水粉画，约 1770 年。大英百科全书。维基共享资源。
CONFUCIUS, ‘Confucius’, gouache on paper, c.1770. Encyclopedia Britannica. Wikimedia Commons.
苏格拉底，《苏格拉底之死》（1787 年），雅克·路易·大卫（1748-1825 年）。凯瑟琳·罗瑞拉德·沃尔夫收藏，沃尔夫基金会，1931 年。Wikimedia Commons。
塞内卡，《垂死的塞内卡》，1612-13 年，彼得·保罗·鲁本斯（1577-1640 年）。Wikimedia Commons。
SENECA, ‘The Dying Seneca’, 1612–13, Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). Wikimedia Commons.
IBN SINA，“阿维森纳—伊本·西纳”，2014 年 5 月，Blondinrikard Fröberg。 Flickr，知识共享。
IBN SINA, ‘Avicenna—Ibn Sina’, May 2014, Blondinrikard Fröberg. Flickr, Creative Commons.
迈蒙尼德， 《布罗克豪斯和埃夫隆犹太百科全书》 （1906-1913 年）插图。Wikimedia Commons。
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE, Wikimedia Commons.
ZERA YACOB，“拉利贝拉日落与 Bet Giorgis”，2007 年，A. Davey，拉利贝拉，埃塞俄比亚。维基共享资源。
松尾芭蕉，《松尾芭蕉的肖像》，北斋，c。 18-19世纪。维基共享资源。
MATSUO BASHO, ‘Portrait of Matsuo Basho’, Hokusai, c. 18th–19th century. Wikimedia Commons.
让-雅克·卢梭，《让-雅克·卢梭肖像》，1753 年，莫里斯·康坦·德·拉图尔（Maurice Quentin de La Tour，1704-1788 年）。维基共享资源。
亚当·斯密，《亚当·斯密肖像》，18 世纪，画家不详。Wikimedia Commons。
ADAM SMITH, ‘Portrait of Adam Smith’, 18th century, artist unknown. Wikimedia Commons.
伊曼纽尔·康德，《伊曼纽尔·康德》，1791 年，JL Raab 根据 Döbler 的画作创作。Wikimedia Commons。
IMMANUEL KANT, ‘Immanuel Kant’, 1791, J.L. Raab after a painting by Döbler. Wikimedia Commons.
玛丽·沃斯通克拉夫特，《玛丽·沃斯通克拉夫特肖像》，约 1790-1791 年，约翰·奥皮（1761-1807 年）。Wikimedia Commons。
路德维希·维特根斯坦，《路德维希·维特根斯坦》（1899-1951），1930，莫里兹·内尔（1859-1945）。奥地利国家图书馆。维基共享资源。
西蒙·德·波伏娃，《西蒙·德·波伏娃与让·保罗·萨特在北京，1955 年》，新华社摄影。维基共享资源。
阿尔贝·加缪，《哲学家》，摄影师不详。Wikimedia Commons。
ALBERT CAMUS, ‘Philosopher’, photographer unknown. Wikimedia Commons.
约翰·罗尔斯，《美国哲学家约翰·罗尔斯》，《哈佛公报》。Wikimedia Commons。
JOHN RAWLS, ‘The American Philosopher John Rawls’, Harvard Gazette. Wikimedia Commons.